Saturday, June 30, 2007

Give me convenience or give me death

I am really sick of working all the time. My feet hurt. My neck hurts. I lay down anytime and anywhere that I can. Even in public.

It was Ethan's 7th birthday the other day. We bought him a Tiger Salamander whom he named Zonk. Don't even try to call it a lizard because Ethan will be quick to tell you that Zonk is an amphibian. Just like he goes around correcting his family on other daily misconceptions: "Mummies are NOT covered in Band Aids; they are covered in gauze."

We also took the kids downtown to the Kids Discovery Museum. That place totally sucks. There is nothing notably educational in the entire place. It's kind of like a big place you can take your kids to play with someone elses toys. The coolest thing in the entire place was a book that told you how to make paper airplanes. I'm sure that's a skill teachers love their students to possess. Not only that, but I sat down and it took me ten minutes to make one of the airplanes, because how would you write down the instructions to folding a paper airplane? I don't think any kid in the place could have done it. The best part of the museum was the first 5 seconds we were there when I actually thought there might be SOMETHING interesting inside. I was wrong. The second best thing about the museum was that there were plenty of places for me to lay down my weary body. The worst the about the museum: Kids. The second worse thing about the museum: Their parents.

We had to go through the entire museum, just to give it a fair chance that there might be something cool inside, and it took a long time. After that, we went to the mall food-court to get some lunch. When we were leaving the food-court I opened the door by pushing it with my back. Then I held it open with my back while I pulled our stroller through and then I held it so the rest of my family could come through. While I was holding the door open with my back, some lady wanted to go in through the door and she put her hand on the door while she waited.

When my family was out, I let the door go and walked away with my family. But the lady who had her hand on the door looked at me and spat, "YOU'RE WELCOME."

Apparently I only need to hold the door open for my family to leave a building for people to think I'm a jerk. When she said it, I thought of how satisfying it would feel to backhand her across the face. But I think that was just my impulse as a very tired person. Instead I walked off without any response and I told my wife, "I don't think I can be around people today."

Noting exciting has happened at work. A few different people told me stories about how money from their dead grandpas has ripped their families apart on account of people's willingness to get stupid and stubborn over money, so my earlier advice for people to get rich by waiting for their wealthy relatives to die may have been given in haste.

Maybe we should think of things like this:

The other night at work, one of the mofos came over to the table and said, "Wow! I put my dollar in that Coke machine and it gave me a Coke and then it gave me my dollar back."

One of the other mofos said, "I put my money in that machine earlier and it kept it and didn't give me a drink."

I said, "Uh oh. That Coke machine must run on KARMA. It gives you drinks and money based on what kind of a person you are."

And the second mofo said, "Damn! So that's why it took my money."

But he wasn't playing along with the joke. He said it as though he REALLY deserved to have his money taken.

2 comments:

Native Minnow said...

I too get the urge to smack people, but not just when I'm tired. When I'm tired I actually go through the motions in my head so that I can get some sort of satisfaction by at least picturing them with blood dripping down off their nose, even if I can't see the real thing.

Anonymous said...

My son would turn every assignment, every teachers' note into a paper airplane...