When I walked out of Trader Joe's with my cart full of cheap foreign wine and salty snacks, I saw a behemoth black Cadillac Escalade complete with "SNW DOGS" license plate pull up and park in the handicapped spot right in front of the store. Oh, this out to be good, I thought to myself.
As I looked back to take a second look at the vehicle, I saw no handicapped placard visible. Then out it came, and a rather large woman affixed it to he rear view mirror. Now curious, I stopped and pretended to be reviewing my receipt as I waited for the woman to step from the vehicle. Soon she emerged.
She was fat, I'll give her that. But she seemed to be able to walk fine as she grabbed a shopping cart and walked into the store. There's no doubt in my mind, however, that inside of ten years she'll have one of those three-wheeled electric carts for people who are too fat to walk.
As I headed back to my car, an older thin man with a distinct limp walked from his car clear across the crowded parking lot and into the store.
After getting home from Thanksgiving dinner at the 'rents house, I turned on the evening news once again and saw another earth-shattering lead story -- millions of Americans will hit the stores tomorrow. And get this, retailers are hoping for larger holiday sales revenues than last year!
By the way, just who are these idiots who will get up at 5 a.m. tomorrow to be first in Wal-Mart? And why? I think a 3-pack of Brawny paper towels will still be $3.79 next week.
I flipped on the news tonight and I couldn't believe the lead story -- today is the busiest travel day of the year and airports and highways are jammed. Can you believe it?
Next thing I know, they're telling me that millions of turkeys have recently been slaughtered. Really?!
Ok, it's happened to everybody -- you are in a meeting, or at a restaurant or at the dentist's office and someone's phone rings. Only it doesn't ring, it blasts some endless idiotic tune of the month.
What's up with this? What ever happened to a phone that rang and then stopped? Why must it go on and on before its answered? Better yet, why don't people just use the vibrate feature?
If people are going to try to make a personality statement with a ring tone, perhaps they ought to put a little more thought into it.
Or maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon.
Did I mention the holidays are coming? Baaaaaaah, humbug.
I was fried when I got on America West flight 815 from Phoenix to San Francisco. I spent the last two days in meetings and had just flown from Washington/Dulles to Phoenix.
To soften the pain, I ordered a glass of red wine from the stewardess. It went down fast. Then I ordered another from the dude flight attendant.
I settled into the short flight, flipped on my iPod and finished off my wine. We started our descent into San Francisco when the dude flight attendant came by to collect my empties. I passed them over and he said, "Thanks, Lee."
What?! Did he just say my name? How did he know my name? Why did he know? This is weird.
"No problem," I said, trying to act cool and disguise my concern.
The flight attendant paused in the isle for a second. "Where did you fly in from?... Chicago?" he asked.
Ok, how did this guy know I wasn't flying direct from Phoenix? Again, this is weird, I thought.
"Huh?" I said. "Oh, DC."
"Ahh, fight 35," he said.
"Yep, that's it," I said.
He walked away and proceeded to clean-up the rest of the cabin.
We landed and I headed off of the plane. As I approached the plane door, the flight crew was saying their good-byes to passengers as usual. The flight attendant dude saw me leave.
After getting locked out of my online American Express account this morning, I called AmEx to fix the problem. I waited on hold 5-8 minutes, and then a woman came on the line.
"American Express, may I help you," she said in a middle-eastern accent.
I explained my problem to her, and she fixed it. As she said good-bye, she wished me a good evening.
"Does she even know what time it is?" I thought to myself. "Better yet, where is this woman?"
Then it dawned on me.
Call me crazy, but when I call American Express, I expect to speak with someone in America. Silly me.
After grabbing a cup of coffee at the yuppie mega-corporate Seattle-based coffee powerhouse, I headed over to Mac's Smoke Shop for a Sunday Chronicle. On my way, I couldn't help but notice an unfamiliar homeless-looking man doing the toothless chomp so many of them seem to do. I walked past him and into Mac's. The place was empty except for two of the many colorful employees who work there. The old dude who always wears a funny top hat was there talking to his co-worker.
"Just a Chronicle, please," I said to the man with the top hat.
"That'll be a dollar sixty-two," he responded.
I gave him a $5 bill, and he gave me my change. "Don't forget to take your paper on the way out," he reminded me.
As I walked over to the stack of Chronicles, I heard the other employee talking to the man with the top hat. "By the way, your little friend isn't allowed in here anymore today," he said. "She just tried to borrow $5 from me."
"Oh really?" asked the man with the top hat.
At that point, I grabbed my paper, waked out the door and turned left toward my house. As I walked, I couldn't help but see the old man again who I had seen earlier. Then I noticed another old man a few yards away doing the same familiar toothless chomp. Seems like an inordinate number of older, derelict-like people are walking the block today. Maybe the old folks home has them out on a field trip.
As I got further down the street, I was approached by an older, possibly homeless woman with a walker. She asked me the now infamous line, "Can I borrow $5?"
Wondering when and where she might repay me, I declined her request.
I was driving home from Safeway around 6:00 p.m. this afternoon when I attempted to pull into the illegal parking space in front of my house. Usually no one has the guts to park there, so on a weekend that's my personal spot. But no such luck tonight...
I could see the headlights and the interior lights on from the car parked there. Just as I passed, I saw a folicly challenged man (like me) get out of the passenger seat and start walking down the sidewalk. I didn't recognize him, but he appeared to know where he was going, and he was hustling. As I pulled into a parking space a few yards up the street, I could see the man quickly walk out of sight.
I got out of my car and began removing some groceries when I heard a woman from the car yell, "Are you serious?"
I ignored her, assuming that she was talking to someone else.After all, paranoid schitzopherenia is practically contagious around here.
As I got a few bags together, I could see the woman walking toward me. She appeared to have a bit of a swagger. Now my guess is that alcohol is involved.
"So, what are you, the biggest jerk on this planet?"she says, looking my direction.
That's funny, I thought to myself. That's what I was going to ask her for parking in my personal illegal parking spot.Still assuming she was talking to someone else, I did not respond. Then she got about 15 feet from me and again asked, "Are you serious about this?"
I looked straight at her and asked, "Are you talking to me?"
"Yes," she said.
Then, as she got closer, she could see I was not her chrome-domed boyfriend. I was just another random chrome dome on the street. (Now I know how the Mexicans must feel!)
"Uhhhh," I could here her sigh as she realized who I wasn't. She continued to walk down the street but her boyfriend was gone, probably on Caltrain by now. "I can't believe this," she said under her breath.
The woman turned around and walked back past me as I brought my groceries to my house."Sorry," she said, acknowledging her misguided rudeness earlier.
"No problem," I said. "I've been called a jerk lots of times."
She walked back to her car and I walked into my house.
As she drove away, I stopped to ponder the moment. Her boyfriend had just dumped her and pulled the instant split. She pulled over and he just took off -- didn't even look back.
Webster's dictionary defines "huMAN" as "relating to or characteristic of huMANs. Consisting of huMANs. Having huMAN form or attributes."
Webster's dictionary defines "MANkind" as "the huMAN race: the totality of huMAN beings."
Webster's dictionary defines MAN as "huMAN being, the huMAN race, MANkind. A bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) that is anatomically related to the great apes but distinguished by notable development of the brain with a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning."
Sure, the dictionary gives other definitions of MAN that refer to the male gender, but the primary definition of MAN refers to MANkind; the totality of huMAN beings. In other words, the entire huMAN race.
Why then do we, as a society or a culture, get so preoccupied with the maleness of the word MAN? Is it more important to identify gender over species?
Remember the days when a salesMAN was a salesMAN? We didn't have to worry about defining the gender of a particular salesMAN as a "salesWOman," or completely androgynizing the term by saying "salesperson."
Well, those days are gone. Actually, they are way gone. We are now so afraid of offending people (presumably huMANs, by the way) that we rarely even use the term MAN anymore.
Our politically correct culture now prefers terms like "sales representative" or "director of sales." How "sales MANager" still flies is beyond me. But if the trend continues, we'll soon see terms like "sales woMANager" or better yet, a frog will be helping us with that new pair of shoes because it will no longer be important for our "sales associate" to be huMAN.
