Assorted Irritants and the Like

I love you, I love you not: From FB, which is a blog-like instrument for those of us with impossibly short attention-spans not correctable with Ritalin or Adderall: A coworker commented a couple of weeks ago that she was very saddened by the fact that she had to get rid of her dog of seven years because her young granddaughter, who lives with her, was very allergic to dogs. She deposited the dog, her companion of seven years, at the local dog pound. She was severely depressed by this and cried at length on FB. Everyone of course sympathized, empathized and anything else that ends with "ized." We all left soothing and understanding comments. Switch to three days ago. She has a new profile picture holding up a cute, white, fuzzy little puppy with the comment "Meet my new puppy!" BTW, her granddaughter is still living with her but I guess she got over her allergies in the short time it took for the pound to put the older dog down and for her grandma to impulsively buy a new puppy and show it off on FB. Cute.

Kill the Suckah: One morning, while walking from the parking garage to my office, a snake ("A snake?" Yes, a snake.) crossed my path on the sidewalk. It was beautiful, gunmetal gray, shiny, smooth, obviously lost. I think it's called a graphite something-or-other and I once had one in my garage for a few days until it slithered out in the street and committed hara-kiri, which really saddened me. Anyway, I bent down to look at my present snake, marvelling at its beauty and grace. I didn't get too close because things in nature should be left the hell alone, not get tagged in order to preserve the species, not get handled in order for us humans to get a kick out of it because we are entitled to get a kick out of everything in the damn world, just left alone. A young woman happened by and looked down to see what I was looking at and screamed "What is it?" I turned to her and said "It's a beautiful snake." Her answer was "Kill it!" My answer was "Why would you kill something this beautiful? It's not poisonous and it eats mice and rats, populations that need to be controlled." The young lady raced away as fast as she could. Confirms my hypothesis that some people, probably a lot more than we suspect, would become Hitlers if given half a chance. And also that no one should be armed.

I'm 55?!?: The weekend before last, my boyfriend was picking me up to go to "Taste of the Grove" which basically can be translated as "Bring a lot of money, yo. You're going to be paying bowcoo (beaucoup, i know how to spell) bucks for two tiny glasses of white zinfandel and two tiny plates of food while you freeze your asses outside listening to several local bands perform covers of Midnight Confessions and Mony, Mony." We go every year and I have to confess I like the music and I like watching the same 50-something hippies and Vietnam vets boogieying (Sp? Help?) to the music and the food is ok and we get a little buzzed too. It helps. Digressing is my bag, yo. Anyway, my mom ,who is otherwise hard of hearing and to whom you have to repeat things to in increasing volume, sometimes almost screaming, must have heard me grab my purse from the other side of the door over the blaring TV show she was watching. She did what she usually does, she called me on the cell phone. I don't know if you all have noticed that we have become damn slaves to our stupid and inane cell phones. My son even calls me from his room which is ten feet away from mine to tell me to switch to this or that channel, or to check out what Tony Soprano is saying to his cumpas (Sp?). Anyway (again), I answered my cell and my mom asked me her eternal question, "Are you home?" And I answered my eternal answer,"Yes, but I'm leaving." To which she replied "You're leaving? Where are you going?" I just stared at the phone, my eyes wide in disbelief. I'm 55, I thought. Do I really have to give her an explanation? When I was young I remember my grandma asking MY MOM the same question and her answering "Don't ask me where I'm going, I have things to do" (in Spanish, of course). I just mumbled "I'll be back later." And she said "Ok."

After you. No, after you. No, I insist...: Yesterday morning I turned in to the parking garage at work and immediately noticed a middle-aged man trying to cross right in front of me. I am a considerate driver in South Florida. I say this because I am well-aware that there are not many like me in this area of our great nation. I let pedestrians cross, I never honk after a New York minute when the light turns green and the guy in front of me is clearly investigating the booger contents of his nose (which is his prerogative), I try to be aware of bicyclists because I do not want to clip anyone and have them get hurt, I try to be polite on the road.

Get to the point: I saw this man stop as he saw me pulling in the garage entrance. He was walking with a limp, but came to a halt when my car approached. I immediately stopped and waved for him to cross. Why did I do this? Because the place where I work is crawling with 18 year olds who zip in and out of the garage and in and out of parking spaces and turn right in front of cars that are six inches away from them, etc. I thought to myself: Let him cross so that, like the proverbial chicken in the fable, he can get to the other side.

The guy shook his head and waved ME through. I insisted because, if he was a visitor to our fine institution he may not know he was taking his life in his own hands, or worse yet in the hands of the young driving mercenaries populating our campus. I guess this gesture on my part made him angry because he yelled "Goddammit, go!" and flipped me the finger. I yelled back, "I was trying to be nice, A$%hole!" Nice start to the workday...

Can I show you my lingam? A very nice gentleman, a friend of my boyfriend (to whom I have referred on this blog repeatedly as Thing 2, but who will heretofore be referred to as "My Fiance" - Just kidding!) gave me a lingam stone from India. "What is that?" you may enquire, and I would answer: Lingam stones come from India. If you google them you get like three encyclopedias of information but basically they are elongated, kind of egg-shaped but long, very smooth, have at least two colors and are beautiful. My fiance's friend gave it to me because I like rocks and so does he and so we traded some rocks and his present to me was that lingam stone. They are supposed to bring people luck and have other curative and positive powers as well which I have not yet corroborated, or maybe I have and don't know it...things could be much , much worse, after all.

Down the hall from mine is the office of a geologist who is incredibly knowledgeable and a super-nice person with whom I have had some "rock" conversations. I brought my lingam with me and told him enthusiastically: "I want to show you my lingam! Is it true that lingam stones come from meteorites?" In his dry, British manner he said to me: "Before you go any further, I need to let you know that the word "lingam" is Sanskrit for "penis." I'm still laughing about it. I thanked him for stopping me and he went on to say that they are usually just river rocks and do not come from meteorites.