Tag: i hate everything

Becoming the Curmudgeon

Pavowski5 Comments

I’ve always joked that I’m going to become that old guy. You know the one. Pants a little too high on the waist. Hair in wispy explosions behind the ears. Gravelly, phlegmy voice. Shouting at the neighborhood kids, warning them off his lawn.

I hate everything, so this is a natural outgrowth, but I fear it may be closer than I anticipated.

And ironically, what’s bringing it out of me the most is day care.

I know; there’s nothing more suburban and yuppie than kvetching about your kids’ day care. To be fair, though, it’s not the day care that I have a problem with; it’s the other parents.

Our “school” hosts about fifty kids. It’s not huge, by any stretch. So it’s a comfy little building with a tiny little parking lot; about twenty spots or so, with a “pickup lane” running the gap right in front of the door.

Now, look. I’m going to preface all this by owning and acknowledging how 1st world this particular issue is, but I think, like most things, this is a microcosm for bigger problems.

This parking lot, then, of twenty spaces or so, means that there really isn’t a bad spot in the lot. At worst, you have to walk maybe fifty feet to the front door; a not at all unreasonable distance to rid yourself of your kids in the wee hours of the morning. But there’s also that pickup lane.

Now, the pickup lane is there, presumably, for people to keep their cars idling while they hop in to pick up or drop off the kids. Well and good. But at our day care, people don’t just use the pickup lane. They park right in front of the goldfingered door. So I, and anybody else unlucky enough to arrive at the same time as these hapless, bumbling SOBs, have to detour around their cars, sucking up their exhaust, just to get into the building.

And this is bullsharknado. I pay the same weekly fee as these people. My son and daughter come home with the germs that these people’s kids bring to school. My wife and I (okay, mostly my wife) bring in extra donations when the pre-k teachers send home flyers begging for them. (Seriously, my wife sent in two full-sized pumpkins. WHO DOES THAT?!) But no, I have to detour around their oversized cars for the privilege of using the front door.

Never mind that there are perfectly good parking spaces — dozens of them! — not ten feet away. Never mind that in addition to disrupting the walking traffic, I’ve seen these knuckle sandwiches align themselves like poorly-placed Tetris blocks, stopping even the other jerk stores from passing through the pickup lane until they’ve done their business inside (and they’re never walking in a hurry, either, let me point out). No, these monsters have to park right in front of the door, right across the middle of the crosswalk, and to hell with anybody who’s inconvenienced.

I mean, we’re living in a society, aren’t we? Enough people live in these cramped cities of ours that, even if you hate people like I do, you surely understand that we’re better off if we occasionally look out for each others’ well being and convenience than if we only look out for our own.

These are the people who will drive past the backup at the on-ramp, then nose in at the last possible second. The ones who will angle their shopping cart to stop and obstruct the entire derping aisle at the grocery store while they compare nutrition labels on store-brand and name-brand Cheez-its. Speaking of the grocery store, these are the ones who will blithely pay for a hundred-dollar order with a jarful of change with five customers lined up behind them, or who will stalk you in the parking lot for your space that’s fifteen feet closer to the door than the space that’s wide open a bit further down. (Man, I have a lot of rage centered on the grocery store.)

Well, I’ve had it. I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m no longer content swallowing my displeasure in favor of good manners. I thought for a bit about making up a bunch of passive-aggressive notes to stick on their windshields, but there’s something cowardly in that, and I also think that if you’re being an arsehole, you need somebody to point it out to you to your face for it to really sink in.

So, when I see these people now, I’m calling them on it.

Politely. Self-deprecatingly. But directly. “Hey. I’m not trying to be rude, but this is a crosswalk you’ve parked on.”

I say it, and I can feel that siren’s song in my gut when I do it. Get off my lawn.

I’ve done it twice, now. As nicely as I can stand. And you know what I’ve seen in the faces of the two people I’ve tried out this societal intolerance on? Confusion. They were surprised that I was saying anything to them in the first place, but more than that, they legitimately had no idea they were doing anything anybody would find objectionable. Double-takes to their cars and the crosswalk. Uneasy shuffling. To say nothing of my blood pressure shooting through the roof — me, the ever-avoider of conflict, getting face-to-face to call somebody on their stupid.

But you know what else?

They aren’t parking in front of the door anymore. And that feels good. But I know I’m also paying a price for it. The price of being disliked and grumbled about after the fact. Then again, that may be a price I’m happy to pay.

Is this my first step towards becoming the King Jerk of my neighborhood?

 

Do You Work Here?

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I’m back to school this week. Time is short. Nerves are frayed. Free time is nearly nonexistent.

So, a lack of posts lately. Sorry about that. But here’s a quickie for today:

I’m on my way to work yesterday morning. Shirt and tie, because that’s how I roll (and yes, in several rooms full of teachers preparing for the upcoming year, I was the ONLY guy wearing a tie). And because I’m running early, and because, as the theater teacher, I have been given an unholy jumble of keys to contend with, I decide to stop off at the Wal-Mart to get some key labels. (Yeah, I know, Wal-Mart. It’s the only place I know that sells these things.)

So I go in, but it’s laid out differently from the Wal-Mart closer to my house, so I’m wandering the aisles looking for the key doodads. It’s taking a while. As I’m walking, trying to avoid human contact (because that’s what you do in a Wal-Mart: who knows what communicable diseases are lurking on the clientele), I notice this guy stalking me. I round a corner by the housewares, he’s there. I double back somewhere around the fishing lures, he’s there.

Finally, he approaches me. “Do you work here?”

For some reason, I get asked this all the time, doubly so when I’m in a shirt and tie. (Though why anybody would suspect a Wal-Mart employee of wearing a shirt and tie is beyond me.) I give the polite get-the-fargo-away-from-me smile. “I don’t, sorry.”

The guy looks at me oddly and walks away.

I still can’t find the key thingamajigs, so I’m still wandering, and somewhere around the power tools, I see him out of the corner of my eye, birddogging me again. I take another turn down yet another aisle (seriously, where the hell are the key flibberdijibbits?), and wham, there he is.

“Hey man,” he asks me with a hint of desperation in his voice, “are you sure you don’t work here?”

I mean, let’s analyze here. What could possibly be the thinking that would make him ask me again? That I do work here, but was just lying to get him to leave me alone (which I might do if I did, but I don’t), and that I will now be convinced to help him out because, hey, sorry, you got me? That I work here, but I’d just forgotten, and have now been reminded thanks to my anonymous stalker? My brain lights up with a pinball machine as I’m trying to figure this out.

I finally shake my head. “No, man. I told you, I don’t work here.”

He shakes his head, looks a little lost. “It’s just that I’m looking for this guy, he’s supposed to work here, I thought he’d be in this section.”

I’m past being polite. “Hey, I dunno what to tell you. I can’t help you.”

Again, that odd look — like maybe he thinks I’m gonna unzip my skin and underneath I’ll be this guy he’s looking for — and he shuffles off.

Thankfully, I find the key doohickies around the next corner.

I am still trying to figure out what the hell went on in this guy’s head to get him to ask me twice.

Probably drugs.

Things You Could Do Instead of Playing Pokemon Go:

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Literally anything.

Already a guy has admitted to crashing his car into a tree (and I mean totaling it) because he was playing while driving.

Police departments across the country (if not the world? International readers, help me out) have been issuing statements: exercise caution while playing. Do not trespass while playing. Do not play while driving. etc.

My Facebook feed (YES I STILL USE FACEBOOK DEAL WITH IT) is lousy with jokes and memes and “funny” pictures of Pokemon popping out of people’s pants.

And people I know personally have expressed anger — ANGER! — at being run out of graveyards late at night because they were playing the game.

The game might encourage people to get up off the couch. It might encourage them to get out and socialize. It might rekindle a long-lost love for a game that many people apparently enjoyed in their youth. (I never saw the appeal, but hey, it takes all kinds.)

But it also encourages loitering. It encourages wandering more or less blindly into unfamiliar places. It encourages walking around with your face glued to your phone screen — which is something we already do too much of.

It is TEARING COMMUNITIES APART.

This fad cannot run its course soon enough.

Now get off my lawn.

Your Kids Are Not My Kids

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The same thing happens everywhere we go.

Strange kids come running up to my wife and myself, imploring us to “watch me,” or “look what I can do,” or “check me out!” It happens everywhere. The playground. The neighborhood pool. The waiting room at the doctor’s office.

Your kids want US to watch them. Watch them climb up the slide backwards. Watch them do a crappy somersault. Look at this dumb toy with the detachable attachments. Watch them run around in circles and fall down. Basically, they want us to look at all the stupid kid stuff that they’re doing.

We’ve looked. We’ve examined this phenomenon. These kids don’t just go approaching adults willy-nilly. We’re not random targets. They seek us out. They find us. Like tiny heat-seeking missiles with grubby fingers and Cheetohs dust on their shirts, they abandon the swings and the slides to come get in our faces.

Swing, Playground, Children Playing, Park, Child, Play

Why us?

It certainly isn’t because we care. Well, I shouldn’t speak for my wife, but I certainly don’t care. I would be hard-pressed to care less about anything anybody’s kid does, anywhere, at any time. Hell, I can barely summon up enough Fargos to give when my own kids do something mediocre (oh, good job, you stacked some soda cans on top of each other! Oh, wow, look at that formless scribble you drew on the TV Guide! [just kidding, who even has TV Guides anymore] Wow, listen to that garbled nonsense that just poured out of your mouth!). The only reason I do care when my kids manage some dubious toddler achievement is because I’m biologically compelled to do so: some bizarre alchemy of genetics and instinct overrides my default response, transforming a gruff “leave me alone” into a half-hearted “aw, that’s great!”

But I have no such genetic hard-coding when it comes to your kid.

I don’t love him. I don’t hope for her well-being (outside of a general, future-of-the-species vaguery). And I double definitely don’t give a sharknado about your kid and the fact that he can spin around in a circle until he falls down, or that she can almost but not quite balance on one foot for two seconds. I just don’t. And the only reason I won’t tell your kid exactly that is because society frowns on shouting at children, unless those kids are your own. Instead, I will summon up an even more (or would it be less?) half-hearted smile than the one I give my own kids, show them my teeth, and hope like hell inside my head that they just go away.

But they keep coming. They keep approaching me. Showing me dumb things that nobody cares about, seeking my attention when my own kids have already used up all of it.

Why are they seeking out my attention?

Because they don’t have yours. The only thing I can count on just as much as a strange kid coming up to beg me for a few seconds of attention is that while said kid is bugging me, I can cast my gaze across the playground/waiting room/pool pavilion and see that kid’s parent completely ignoring him. You got your kid to the playground, cut him loose on the slides, and buried yourself eyeballs-deep in Facebook or Twitter or whatever the cool kids are doing these days. You took your kid to the pool, slapped some floaties on her, and dove into a real deep discussion with your neighbor about your nails or your hair or the way that other part of the neighborhood is really going to sharknado. You got to the doctor’s office, and doctor’s offices are BORING, Goldfingerit, so you picked up an issue of Sports Illustrated from three years ago and became real interested in the Packers’ midseason woes.

Meanwhile, your kids are looking for somebody, anybody to pay them an ounce of attention. Just a wisp, a hint, an inkling on a summer breeze that somebody gives a damn about who they are and what they’re doing.

And why are they coming to ME for this vindication?

Because my wife and I pay attention to our kids in public. We have to. I mean, what’s the alternative? We follow them around at the playground — mostly to make sure they’re not running up to other kids’ parents and getting on their nerves. We get into the pool with them, partially because it’s fun, but mostly because they could slip an arm floatie or overturn their dumb float in half a second, and we want to make sure the kids don’t waterboard themselves. We keep an eye on them in the doctor’s office because that’s bloody GERM CENTRAL, and we don’t want them bringing home more of the plague than they have to. We are there. We are present. We pay attention to what they’re doing, and as a result, OUR KIDS DON’T BOTHER OTHER ADULTS. (The unfortunate by-product is: your kids think I care about what kids are doing in general. Sigh.)

I get it. You’re tired. Every parent is tired. Every parent wants nothing more than to disconnect for a few minutes and not have to hover over every little thing their kid does. To just kick back and read for a minute. To sneak away and drop a deuce in peace, even. But you can’t do it at the playground. Ignore your kids at home, where the only other person they can bother for attention is the cat.

Not to be preachy, but when you’re out in public, that’s when you need to pay attention to your kids THE MOST. Not just because they’ll go up and talk to strangers (obviously they will), but because a few seconds is all it takes for somebody to make off with the little bundle of joy that you’re ignoring. And while that might not be a big deal if you’re the only people on the playground, when you’re there at midday and there are twenty kids flying around and a dozen parents on cell phones around the outside … I mean, really? How hard would it be for me to walk off with your kid? Or, let’s make it less sinister — how hard would it be for your kid to just follow me and my kids off the playground?

Look. I’m not out here trying to abduct your kid (as far as you know). The two I have already drive me up the walls six days out of seven. And those are kids that I love. That I’m required by law to care for.

I don’t care about your kids.

It’s your job to do that, so they don’t come looking for vindication from me.