Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog - I don't offend some of the people most of the time

Month: April 2010 Page 2 of 3

Whiners Are Us

My husband is out of town and I was so looking forward to sprawling in that big bed without having a locomotive’s worth of snoring to listen to tonight, but I got a late night request to do some changes on a project and now it’s 1:20 am and all I can think about is whining.

Whining isn’t usually all that funny. I know some people can make it funny – wasn’t there a skit on Saturday Night Live with Doug and Wendy Whiner who had these nasal whines and dragged out their miseries in extended words that sounded like this? “Do-ug, whyyyy are you DO-ING tha-at? You KNOW it ma-akes me cra-a-a-a-a-azy.”

When I whine, people leave the room. I usually whine that I get no freaking help around the house. “Why do you people throw your coat in the floor day after day after day when you know good and well that I’m going to yell at you about it and that makes you mad so why do you do it?”

My kids whine constantly about the food for dinner. My husband is a gourmet cook, which to a kid is worse than feeding them dog food straight from the can. “What’s this? It’s gross? Are we supposed to eat that? I’m not eating it. I can’t even look at it.” They were describing yellow squash which they both loathe like a cow hates flies.

My friends whine to me. They call it venting, but when the vent’s always open and it’s always blowing hot air, it can get pretty annoying. In fact, I get sick and tired, just plain sick and tired of them spouting off about their spouses. The guys are idiots, I’ll concede that, but telling me what their newest outrage is, especially when it sounds pretty much like all the other outrages, gets old. I don’t need to know every single day that Bill was late for supper the night before and didn’t call so the food got cold and the kids were starving. Night after night this happens, and day after day I listen to it. Give it a freaking rest.

Did someone say rest? That sounds like a great idea – if I could only manage to GET some which I won’t be able to since it’s so late and I have to get up at the crack of da-awn.

Picture Imperfect

I have been desperately seeking a point and shoot camera. The problem is, there are a million of them, and new ones spring up like popcorn every 30 seconds.

So much selection would seem to make it easy, and they all have a gazillion features, but not one of the camera companies combine them in the way I want.

When you go to websites like photographyblog.com, they start describing a camera as if it’s finally the answer to everyone’s prayers. “The long awaited Canon ST Two Million is packed with so many features you need a database to keep track of them all.”

This is good news, because in all those features, could it be they have the three or four I’m really interested in? I hold my breath and read further. “This camera can make your mother-in-law look like she’s human and fill in the missing teeth of your redneck friends.”

That’s something I’ve always needed in a camera, especially the filling in teeth, so I check that off my list. But what about the rest? “This camera has a built in hover system so you can set the timer, run over and join your family, get in the picture, and run back and catch it so you don’t have to worry about propping it up on a table and everyone having to be on their knees.”

Now THAT’S definitely a clever feature, and not one I’d thought of but I add it to my list because I now feel like I can’t live without it. But will the camera take a good picture? That’s high up on my list, right under “Will the camera break before the warranty runs out?”

Image quality is a tricky subject. It’s subjective, and there are many variables. Most cameras pitch a fit about being required to do something they don’t like. Yes, they’ll gladly take a nice picture on a sunny day, but if it gets cloudy they’ll coat the scene with a grayish tinge. Or they may not like it inside, so low light pictures have the people in the arc of the flash looking like surprised albinos while anyone a few feet back looks like they’ve been painted with roofing tar.

The sample images are not much help, either. If the scenes are picturesque, then any camera takes a good shot. It’s a little like going into Costco and all the big screen TVs are showing the same thing, and they pretty much look identical except for size. I recently bought a TV for my son and ended up picking one by saying, “Eanie, Meanie, Miney, Mo….”

What I’m looking for in a camera is manual controls so I can override the camera’s stupid Auto Mode on those occasions when it doesn’t know as much as I do, which granted is rare but still. I want a big enough screen so I can at least make out the big objects in the picture I just took without a magnifying glass. And I want it to not be so complicated I have to lug around a phone-book sized manual. If on top of that it takes good pictures, that would be a plus. Oh, and I want a super-zoom so I can take pictures of wildlife, but I don’t want one of those huge ones that’s the size of mailbox. I can see myself swinging one of those hunkers up to my eyeball to look through the viewfinder and knocking myself out cold.

I’ve narrowed my choice down to a Canon because you can practically have the DT’s with a Canon point and shoot and the picture will still come out in focus. The model I’ve been waiting for did not get a good review from photographyblog.com. Actually, it got a glowing review, but only a 4 star rating out of 5, which is hard to understand. It’s like a critic saying he loved a movie but only gave it a B rating.

I’m going to get the camera, though. I’m sick to death of looking, and I’m tired of lugging my Nikon dSLR around for snapshots. I don’t think I’ll have buyer’s remorse when another new model comes out in two days, because I’m certain it will not have all the feature I want either.

I will let you know how the camera turns out, and what model it is once I get it straight. It might be an SX 200 IS but could be an SX 210 IS, though I was also looking at an SX 120 IS. As if the camera features weren’t enough of a headache, they’ve got to make all the numbers the same, too? Jeepers!

Dog vs. Vacuum

Yesterday was a gorgeous day so I decided to take my camera out and get some shots of spring flowers. I took my little Yorkie Poo along, and on the way to the park we passed a carwash, so I decided to give my car a bath.

My dog doesn’t like the carwash. She freaks out when the giant shammy cloth starts slapping against the car. I have to hold her and reassure her that the blue monsters are not going to get her, but she still shakes like a vibrator the whole time.

Yorkie Poos shake for any number of reasons. If they’re happy, they shake. If they’re nervous, they shake. My dog will shake if she needs to do #2 and no one’s jumping off the couch quick enough to suit her.

“Oh your poor little doggy must be cold,” people will say. It can be 90 degrees outside, but people see a vibrating dog and they think it’s shivering. Once my daughter’s friends were over and someone made a loud popping noise. Did I mention the dog shakes whenever anyone bounces a ball or pops a piece of bubble wrap or slams a door?

“Or your poor little doggy is scared,” one of the friends said, sounding like she was heartbroken. I wanted to cheer her up. “She shakes all the time. Do you have any aches and pains? I’ll press her against your back and you can get a free massage.” All the girls giggled about that, and I pressed my dog against one to show I was serious.

The dog shaking has nothing to do with the story I’m telling about the carwash, I just thought you might find it interesting.

So before I went through the wash I decided to vacuum the car. My dog is not nuts about vacuuming, either.  At home she tries to bite the vacuum cleaner. You’d think she’d just go to another room, but instead she plops right in the middle of the rug and waits for the vacuum to come close. She stands her ground, and when it gets inches away she lunges at it, baring little teeth that look like rice stuck into bubble gum, and tries to bite it. Of course the vacuum is too big but that doesn’t stop her. She would rip the thing like Henry the VIII tearing at a turkey leg if her mouth was bigger.

At the car wash, they had a really nice vacuum hose with a wide, narrow end that you can get into tight places between the seats. I love those things. This baby knew how to suck, too. Pine needles held on like leeches but they were no match.

I was really getting into vacuuming the driver’s side floor while my dog was on the passenger seat eyeing the vacuum like it was some alien beast encroaching on her territory. When I went to vacuum the passenger side, she dove onto the floor and attacked the thing. Because the nozzle was narrow, she could get it in her mouth and she clamped down like an alligator. I tried to wrench it away but she held on like it was a juicy bone and wouldn’t let go. Meantime seconds were ticking away on the timer and I didn’t have any more quarters. I kept trying to wrestle it out of her mouth but she hung on like it was one of her tug of war rags. The vacuum was sucking up her ear but she didn’t care. All those years of attacking the giant vacuum at home and getting nowhere – she wasn’t about to let this thing get the best of her.

Desperate to finish before my time ran out, I forced the nozzle down onto the carpet and moved it back and forth, dragging the dog along, back and forth, back and forth, until I got the passenger floor done. I jerked the hose out of her mouth and was headed for the back seat when she pounced on it again, teeth bared like a piranha. I got her tucked under my arm and freed the vacuum again and lunged for the back seat. I worked like a dervish on those little back seat squares, trying to beat the timer. When I got done, the thing was still sucking so I let the dog have another go at it. She sprang forward like she’d been catapulted and clamped down, tugging with all nine pounds of her might. The motor gave four or five warning beeps and the vacuum stopped. The dog let go immediately. She’d killed it. I guess there’s no sport in gnawing a dead vacuum.

I checked the nozzle for damage and, I’m sad to say, there wasn’t even a scratch. The pitiful little dog chewed and tugged with all her might and didn’t even make a dent. But she didn’t know that. She thought she’d killed the hissing beast.

When we went through the carwash, little Miss Mighty Dog didn’t shake. Not even once.

Vows and Frogs

Tonight we went to a party at our neighbor’s house to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. On the invitation, they asked people to dress like the wedding party – to come as a bride or groom or mother-in-law.

This kind of thing absolutely drives me insane. You never know if other people are going to do it or not. What if you’re the only one who shows up in a bride’s dress?

I decided I’d put an old bridesmaid’s dress to see if I had the guts to wear it. I was fixing my hair when my husband said, “What are you doing dressed in THAT??!! Actually I thought I looked rather fetching. I was proud I could even get into it, but that was because it was cut on the bias which means you could stick a hippo in there.

I looked out my bedroom window when I started hearing the guests driving up to see if any were dressed in costume. The men were coming in suits and bow ties, but the women were just in regular party dresses. I changed out of my pretty, shimmering floor length dress and put on something more practical.

When we got to the party, there were a few people dressed in bridesmaids dresses, a few men in tuxes, a man dressed like a priest, and a guy in judges robes who turned out to be a real judge. He told me he was ready to officiate in the event the celebrants wanted to officially renew their vows.

I don’t know about these vow renewals. If you make it 25 years, you’d think you’ve invested enough time that you’ might as well go the distance. On the other hand, I went to one of these ceremonies that was actually in a church because the young couple had run off to get married. A priest said a Mass, and then we enjoyed a lovely reception. Seven or eight years later they were divorced, and both have remarried.

I suspect people renew their vows as an excuse to have a party. These neighbors have quite a few of them – Christmas, birthday, summer parties. Why not throw in a wedding vow renewal?

The highlight of the night was walking outside where all the teenagers were hanging out around the frog pond. You can hear those frogs a block away. They’re so loud you’d think there’re millions of big frogs in that pond. The kids had flashlights, and I saw one little frog doing the – you guessed it – frog kick across the water. He wasn’t much longer than a golf pencil. Cute little thing glistening in the spotlight of the kid’s flashlight beam. The frogs weren’t shy. They were just sitting on rocks or swimming. One of the girls crouched down and caught one. It was little, curled up in her cupped hand and looked dark purple in the black night.

Not that the party wasn’t a whole ton of fun, but I listen to those frogs every night from spring through summer and I’ve never seen one. They’re funny the way they will all get immediately quiet at one time, and a couple of minutes later they start their froggy chorus like they’ve got a conductor keeping them in sync.

All in all it was a great party with a whole lot of very good food and a two tiered cake that melted in your mouth. The couple said some very touching things to each other during an informal re-affirming of their commitment, and there was plenty of wine. If I can have all that, AND FROGS, I won’t turn my nose up at the vow renewals we’re bound to be invited to in the future, as long as they don’t make us come in costume. Did I mention how much I hate that?

Email Plagiarism

I got this email a while back and it’s funnier than anything I can come up with tonight. Is it plagiarism to copy emails? If it is, who’s going to sue me? No one knows who puts these emails together. I get whole slide shows of beautiful pictures with music that must have taken someone forever to do. Don’t people have to work? Perhaps this is how they pass the time while the boss is off at a meeting.

The original of this email had lots of different font styles and colors. Someone had put it together with a creative eye, and they had to gather these tidbits of humor – or did they make them up? How come they’ve got all this extra time and I’m lucky to get six hours of sleep a night I’m so swamped?

I get these well-crafted emails everyday. If you’re female, you probably receive those “sisterhood” emails – the ones with that cartoon lady, Maxine. I get a ton of those, and I have no idea who draws the cartoons or makes up the captions, or who gathers all those pictures of kittens in unnatural positions. I haven’t thought about it much but right now I’ve got a burning curiosity. What kind of people do these things? Would someone tell me? And they get no credit for them – there’s no signature or link to their website so you can purchase something.

I get a million pictures of animals doing things you don’t see in nature. Most of them have been Photoshopped. Dogs and cats don’t assume the missionary position while somebody is standing there holding a camera. I guess they could be animal porn stars. Some pictures are obviously real – the ones where a person with way too much time on their hands has made little outfits to dress up their dogs to like a devil or a Harley rider or Elvis. What I love is the look in the dogs’ eyes. They are not happy. They do not think they look cute.

The world is a crazy place, and that’s affirmed everyday in the emails I get – some from Nancy Pelosi-hating republicans who are trying to incite me to do something – anything – to put them out of their misery. They want me to AT LEAST forward their despair on to someone else so the recipient can be miserable, too. I hope these little tidbits will take you away from the craziness for a couple of minutes and brighten your day. The really crazy thing is – they’re true.

Mathematics & Arithmetic

Romance Mathematics

Smart man + smart woman = romance

Smart man + dumb woman = affair

Dumb man + smart woman = marriage

Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

______________________________

OFFICE ARITHMETIC

Smart boss + smart employee = profit

Smart boss + dumb employee = production

Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion

Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime

_____________________________

SHOPPING MATH

A man will pay $20 for a $10 item he needs.

A woman will pay $10 for a $20 item that she doesn’t need.

_____________________________

GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.

A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.

A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

_____________________________

HAPPINESS

To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.

To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

______________________________

LONGEVITY

Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

______________________________

PROPENSITY TO CHANGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.

A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, and she does.

_____________________________

DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE

A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

_____________________________

HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED

Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, “You’re next.” They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

Yearbook Quotes

It’s that time of year when kids are getting their high school yearbooks. They go around and have their friends sign them. I like reading the comments.

We used to get these nice little notes from people saying what a nice person you were and how fun it was to have you in class. Of course people elaborated, but it was pretty standard unless you had done something memorable in which case there’d be an inside message like, “be sure to call me next time you want to lay on the runway,” referring to times we would sprawl on our backs and watch planes soar a few feet over our heads.

The comments in my daughter’s book are from girls just gushing with enthusiasm. “You ROCK girl! You are so sexy and funny. I hope you will be my bff!!!!!!!!!!!” In your head you can hear their breathless exclamations, and you roll your eyes.

Why the girls are telling their girlfriends they are sexy I haven’t quite figured out, unless that’s the new compliment, like we used to say, “You’re so cute!” to each other. Girls are definitely more sexy than cute these days – I was at the school tutoring today and saw shamelessly short shorts, strapless dresses, plunging tank tops. There’s no question these girls are sexy.

What I liked about my high school yearbook were the ads in the back. Nice businesses around town took out quarter or half page ads to help sponsor the school, and we paid absolutely no attention to them except if they could give us a chance to be creative. Everyone’s favorites were the funeral homes. Why funeral homes advertised in books being thumbed through by teenagers is beyond me, but I didn’t question their motives at the time. I was delighted because you’d give your yearbook to some guy and he’d open it straight to the funeral home and start writing little poems:

You kill ‘em

We chill’em.

You slice ‘em

We ice ‘em

You stab ‘em

We slab ‘em.

You break ‘em

We bake ‘em

You marry ‘em

We bury ‘em

You squeeze ‘em

We freeze ‘em

Good stuff. The other ad I can remember was some business with a picture of a big mousetrap. Apparently they were trying to show that their business was preferable to the competition. The caption read, “Build a Better Mouse Trap…” Vince Quinn got a hold of my yearbook and drew a large, belly-up rat with x’s for eyes with the caption, “Catch a Better Mouse.”

Ah, those were the good old days. There were other drawings and captions in there – anything at all that could be made naughty, funny, or trashy, the guys were all over it, and I loved seeing their creativity.

Kids today may use the f-word like it’s the only adjective in the English language, and they may be scantily clad, but they got nothin’ on us when we were that age. We had Hot Pants and Mini Skirts, after all. When we cussed, it meant something and sounded shocking. And, as demonstrated above, we were quite the poets back in the day.

Your f-word

Is simply absurd

We laid on runways

Those were the fun days

Greetings!

I have recently been intrigued by people’s greetings when you pass them on the street or in parks. I used to never know whether to say hello, look away, or what.

I didn’t like having to make this decision every time so I decided I’d say hello to everyone. Usually I say, “Lo.” This seems to be friendly enough without going overboard. I don’t want these strangers to think I’m flirting or being overly familiar by saying the entire Hello.

Once I consistently started saying a greeting, I found it interesting to see people’s responses. I’ve broken them down into a few types.

(1) The kid. These people have speaker buds in their ears and even if their iPod isn’t on, they pretend they can’t hear you. I suspect all teenagers have fake speaker buds to avoid talking to adults.

(2) The fast walker. This is usually a woman on a mission. She’s trying to get her workout done in record time. She’s in stretchy black pants and takes long strides, swinging her arms forward and back briskly to help propel her at optimal speed. If she responds at all it will be with a chopped off, “Hi!” as if anything more will slow her down.

(3) The guy with the little dog. This guy has a small, curly haired dog on a long leash that is lolly-gagging along, sniffing everything and then peeing on it. The dog pees a lot, too. This guy has got plenty of time to talk. He’ll respond by saying, “What kind of dog is that?” It’s his lead in to asking more questions and engaging you in a conversation. He doesn’t want to try and pick you up, he just wants to chitchat. He’s probably got a nagging wife at home that he’s trying to avoid.

(4) Two-somes. If it’s two women, they’ll ignore you because they’re engrossed in gossip. If it’s an older man and woman, they want to exchange pleasantries, probably because they’ve run out of things to say. Two men want to talk as well. When you say, “Lo,” they say, “Good day for a walk.” They are easily distracted from their conversations, if they were having one.

(5) The shy man. This guy will not make eye contact. He thinks a single woman in a park is out to lasso him, and he wants no part of it. He will not respond come hell or high water.

I used to get irritated when people didn’t respond to my greeting until I started classifying them. By doing this I can make them seem like misguided stereotypes rather than rude people or, worse still, people who aren’t so totally into me. Quite frankly, I now see that those who don’t respond are losers. As such, I’m more than happy when they don’t respond. Who wants a loser chatting you up in a park anyway. It’s creepy.

No News Is the Best News

I read the news today, oh boy. It’s not my habit – I actually prefer to live in a vacuum. However, I still take the paper to do one little puzzle, and on occasion I like to see what’s going on in the world.

The front page was heady with this breaking news: Conan O’Brien is getting a show on TBS. I thank my lucky stars I picked this day to read the paper because this is news I need to know. I like O’Brien – not to look at but he’s pretty entertaining and seems like a nice guy. He’s not using the f-word all the time, which is forbidden on network TV but he might be able to get away with it on cable. However, Steve Koonin, whose name appears to rhyme with Conan which is probably the main reason he’s giving O’Brien a show, says that “Conan’s not a dirty comedian.” I hope this means that neither his tongue, nor his odor, will be foul.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church continues to dig itself in deeper. Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, says homosexuality is the problem with pedophiles. I’m Catholic, and I just have to wonder. When is someone going to muzzle these guys? You cannot justify abuse on any level, and to even hint at a link with homosexuality is going to get you a lot of enemies. It is never politically correct to say anything about homosexuals.

According to another headline, at least the Church has laid down some “official” laws to make sure abuse no longer happens, but that’s been in place for awhile, at least at my church. I had to sign all kinds of papers and have a criminal background check when I taught Sunday school a few years ago – I’m surprised they didn’t fingerprint me. The Vatican is heading in the right direction, but it will be one step forward and two steps back if someone doesn’t tell those Cardinals to put a sock in it.

I wrote sometime in the recent past about being scared of road rage. Turns out it’s happening all around me. A motorist has filed a suit against a police officer for road rage. The motorist claims the off-duty officer flashed him the finger in traffic and called him an expletive. I’m not sure what an expletive is, but it’s probably not something Conan would say. Anyway, the motorist decided to follow the guy, who he didn’t realize was an off-duty officer, to get his license number. When he pulled over, the off-duty officer pulled over too and got out of his car, holding his gun by his side. He yelled at the motorist that he was an expletive and couldn’t expletive drive.

Then the newspaper, being impartial, gave the officer’s version. He said the motorist ran a red light and nearly caused a wreck. When this occurred, the officer, who’s name, can you believe it, was “Nice,” pulls alongside the motorist and says, “Nice, thanks for almost hitting me back there.” The officer also claimed he drew his gun as a precaution. I would almost believe him except he’s been involved in a couple of other incidents, one involving a prisoner’s death for which he was cleared. Even though that seems to reveal a pattern of violence and hot headedness, it didn’t carry as much weight in my mind as him using his own name, “Nice,” to describe something that he found to be very irritating  – a guy running a red light. If he thinks this is “nice,” what does that tell you about how he feels about his own name? I’ll let the psychologists sort that out. I’m still trying to figure out why an off-duty officer would get into a fracas with a motorist that led to drawing his gun and perhaps getting into a gun fight – WHEN HE’S GOT A 6 WEEK OLD BABY IN THE CAR WITH HIM.

For one thing, he shouldn’t have been allegedly shouting expletives in front of the baby. I wonder if Conan should have a talk with him.

Well, that’s all the news I could take for one day. When they say “no news is good news,” they sure got that right.

Who’s Paying for Your Tea Party?

I received a phone call today from someone who was concerned about my money and whether or not the government was going to let me keep a hold on it. This person, who was a recording, invited me to an upcoming Tea Party that is sure to be happening in my area soon. In the meantime, I could go to a website to get caught up on what’s going on with the government.

Curiosity got the better of me and I went to the website. Quite impressive. I do web design, and I recognize something that’s been done professionally, and by professionally I mean something that costs a pretty penny.

I asked Google about these Americans for Prosperity, and found out that these guys are heavily funded by the Koch Family Foundations. The Koch Family has extensive holdings in oil and refineries. Ah, I said to myself, now it’s making sense. Of course they’d want government out of their business. We as a nation need to be heading into the future like the rest of the world and get away from our dependency on oil. But if that happens, these guys will lose a lot of money. I guess if I were the Koch family I’d be bellowing like a cow stepping on its own tit if the government was making it more difficult to keep business as usual.

Rich people know they can’t just stand up and say they want to keep their money. Who is going to sympathize with that? So they hire really smart people to make it look like the government is taking away the rights of the people. They know how what scares people, and they use that to make their case.

I’m not a socialist and I don’t like government waste. I don’t like people taking advantage of welfare any more than I like people taking advantage of tax codes. But I do like that our government steps in and says “enough” when people aren’t doing right by others. Who can argue that the government should regulate the safety of coalmines or toxic waste dumps or oil spills? Does anyone want these companies to have free rein when it comes to doing what’s best for all the people instead of the padding the pocketbooks of the wealthy?

It irks me when an organization funded by big money presents itself as a champion of “the people.” The people in this case are regular guys who worry about getting their retirement sucked up by government spending – and especially since some have experienced that already. No wait, that was the rich banking people who sucked up their retirement. Wasn’t that when the government stepped back from regulating? And now a group funded by oil companies wants the government to quit regulating businesses. Weren’t the oil companies the ones making record profits while our economy was going to hell?

Sometimes it’s hard to know who to believe, but here’s a clue: if a group hires Sarah Palin to be a speaker, run like a person with a bad case of the gravies to the crapper, because that woman is full of it. Oh yeah, she may be cute and she may be entertaining, but who can forget that she cost John McCain the Presidency when she decided to be a renegade, and she jumped ship on the State of Alaska after touting what a wonderful governor she was. Besides, she shoots animals from a helicopter. When she was under the gun in Alaska for ethics questions, she tucked tail and ran. Her prey isn’t so lucky. Any idiot who’s been to a shooting range a couple of times can point a gun out a window and kill an animal, especially when the animal has nowhere to run for cover. It’s just not sporting, and it’s even embarrassing. What kind of person brags about that? The kind of person that an organization like Americans for Prosperity would pay upwards of $100,000 to speak for them.

Ask yourself who’s paying for this Tea Party and why. Ask yourself why they’re calling it a Tea Party when it’s nothing like its namesake, the Boston Tea Party? These guys are paying big money to make you think it is. Wonder why?

Rules of the Road

People on the roads have gotten into such a hurry. Even in Oregon, where people generally will wait for you at a red light and not blow their horn when it turns green and you don’t dash forward like a race horse out of the gate. Unlike many other cities, you can drive around Portland without annoying drivers laying on their horns for the least little delay.

I’ve noticed, however, that people are starting to show signs of impatience. Like at intersections during heavy traffic, when you’re supposed to hold back and leave room so cars crossing in front of you can still get through. I have always done this, but last week a car pulled around in front of me and went into that space. What the heck? They’ve blocked the intersection to get a car-length ahead.

My first reaction was to use my finger as a sign of my disapproval, but I was too chicken. What if the person was a homicidal maniac? You couldn’t possibly get away from them in stop-and-go traffic. They could pull out a gun and make you look like a piece of Swiss cheese before you could say, “Uh, just kidding.” Instead I shook my head and wore a nasty frown for a few blocks just in case they looked in the rear view mirror. As if it would matter to a human being like that.

I hate when people get in a big hurry and ride right on your tail. It’s almost like they hope they can nudge you forward. When I first see these aggressive drivers zooming up in my rear view mirror, I lead them along a little bit and watch them posturing like they’re going to hit me, then I yank my car off the road and let them pass. The second they get by, I floor my car and go right up on their tails. Oh, I’m clever! I’m trying to show them how stupid they are, but they never notice, because they’re too busy roaring up to the next car.

The funny thing is that neither of these kinds of drivers get anywhere quicker than I do, especially in heavy traffic. If they go around me, they only get one car length ahead, and then they’re locked in a sandwich between me, the driver they just irritated, and the guy in front who they’re in the process of irritating. If they manage to get around him, they’re still only two car lengths ahead of where they were in the first place, and we’re all stressed out and testy.

What’s especially satisfying to me is when I change lanes or somehow get an opening and can pull in front of the idiot who was riding me a couple of minutes earlier. I’ve rubbed his nose in it. I’ve showed him that being rude, impatient, and inconsiderate does not pay. I’m still, however, too big a coward to flash him my finger. I figure even if he doesn’t realize he’s been one-upped. I know, and I  practically float off my seat with the little personal triumph. If he passes me again, it’s just another opportunity to teach him the same lesson again. It’s a win-win for me.

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Copyright © 2021 by Suzanne Olsen