Still Cranky After All Of These Years

I haven't done a good rant in a while. And I desperately need to. Because most people are asshats.

I've had a lot to do the last few weeks, and every errand I run insures that I have to put up with groups of people with no social awareness or sense of self. It makes my head want to explode. Have you ever seen an old-school pressure cooker, with the little metal top that spins and systematically releases the steam inside so the pot doesn't become a weapon of mass destruction? That's me. And this is my spinning steam top.

Here are some things that are raising my blood pressure this week. These same things may not be raising my blood pressure next week. People, you see, are always finding new and different ways to be idiots. We are evolving. Into bigger and bigger assholes.


1. Slow walkers.

2. Slow walkers who walk side by side with other slow walkers, forming a deadly clot in the walkway artery.

3. Low talkers. Seriously, speak the *%$# up.

4. Indecisive people at the grocery store. You're in the condiments aisle. I know there are a lot of ketchup choices these days. But you should be able to pick a bottle and get the hell out of my way in 10 seconds or less. It just goes on your fries, you'll be fine.

5. People who still, despite the general consensus that it's dangerous and makes you look like a self-important douche-canoe, talk on their phones while driving. Unless it's me who's talking while driving, and I of course can give you a million reasons why my case is different and I am not actually being a douche-canoe.

6. Smoking sections. Because a smoker's right to smoke in that county is more important than my right to be able to go to the only O'Charley's in the immediate area for loaded potato soup of a Friday night without smelling the noxious fumes that, SHOCKER, do not magically stop moving over the plastic barrier between the smoking and non-smoking section.

7. Customer service workers who don't serve their customers because that makes doing their job too hard.

8. Humana Spending Account Administration. I'm not even going to go into details here. I feel a stroke coming on just typing the name.

9.  Helicopter parents. (They bother me so much during Ainsley's swim events that I took 2 online quizzes to make sure I'm not one. The Internet says I'm not, so it's true.)

10. Parents who don't actually parent and just let their kids roam free in public places.

11. The TB ward that filled the row behind me at Les Mis last night coughing and sneezing all over my back and, just to keep things interesting, kicking the back of my seat during the slower moments. I should mention that this entire row consisted of tweens and younger children in an extended family whose parents sat a row behind them and actually got to enjoy the show. So really just number 10 again.

12. Anybody who doesn't clean up their own mess.

13. Chronic question-askers.


Okay, then. That's it. For now. I am going to the closest drug store and using one of the free blood-pressure screening thingies. And on the way there, I will get cut off by someone talking on a cell phone to their child's swim coach asking why Junior isn't swimming the 100 Free in the next meet when clearly that's his best chance to join Michael Phelps in the Olympics this summer. When I do get there, a slow walker carefully weighing her Tampax options with her slow-walking bestie will make me have to take the maze approach to getting to the machine. Once my arm is in the cuff, an unsupervised child coughing up a lung and probably spreading bird flu will run over my foot with a shopping cart and proceed to ask me 20 questions about what that thing on my arm is doing and what those numbers mean. The pharmacist might tell him to go find his mom, but he'll talk so low we won't make out words, we'll just see that his mouth is moving and ask him to repeat himself. I will decide to go ahead and pick up my prescriptions but my Humana Flex Spending card will be deactivated because Humana lost my validation paperwork. Again. The cashier will not be at the register anyway because she'll be flirting with her boyfriend in the liquor aisle, so it won't matter. And on my way out to my car, pissed but with no better idea whether or not I actually do have high blood pressure, I will step in someone's gum, which they were too lazy to spit into a garbage can.

So...maybe not.