You Talking To Me? You Talking To Me? Uh, No. Apparently You’re Not.

Many of us have had the awkward experience of getting on an elevator with only one other person, and have that person begin to start talking, and from their statement, which appears to have come out of the middle of an already ongoing conversation, it is quite clear they aren’t talking to you. For a split moment you quickly jump to the conclusion that this person may be “different” in the mental stability sense, and whether you want to admit it or not, you involuntarily take a slight step back. Not really sure why this is. If this person is really in the midst of a psychotic break, and feels that slashing open your throat releasing an arcing rainbow of crimson in the air is the only way to quiet the voices in their head, do you really think the 8 inches of safety you created by the step back move has created an anti-psychotic force shield that will thwart this individuals potentially dastardly deed. Less than 1% of the time you really are riding with the Son of Sam (and hence probably are not reading this do to your unfortunate demise), however over 99% of the time you realize that the individual occupying the space with you is simply talking on a cellular phone headset. Although these headsets have been around for quite sometime, I am still surprised by the absolutely oblivious and irreverent type of behavior people engage in on these marvels of modern communication technology. Over the last two days, I had interesting experiences with two headset conversation holders.

　
　

The TMI Guy

This is the guy on the elevator or in line at the supermarket/fast food restaurant who talks way too loud about personal matters. These conversations include such things as talking to his doctor about his herpes and accompanying anal leakage (remember that one small subconscious step you took away from the person you believed was mentally ill? When you hear the above conversation on the elevator with this guy, that 8 inch move away becomes Simon Says, “Take 3 giant steps backwards and try to get so close to the wall that you begin to share molecules”). This is also the character that has intimate conversations with his significant other who he self-reportedly is “…going to give it to.” If there is any question as to what “it” is, this less-than-subtle gentleman’s (term used extremely loosely) series of hip gyrations and pelvic thrusts while on the phone provide the audience all the information they need to determine the identity of the mystery noun that “it” refers to. As I got on the elevator yesterday, and pressed my desired floor, I heard the only other gentlemen on the elevator say, “Well, you better get your ass home right away today after school!“ I quickly figured out this was not a typical mentally ill person’s statement, and turned to notice an earpiece plastered to this guy’s melon. I could only hear muffled sounds coming from the other end, and then the guy exploded in a tirade, “I don’t give a shit what your stupid mother said. You are not going to that game. Your ass is grounded from that stunt you pulled last week.” Then there was more mumbling/crying/whining from the other end. And then again another exemplar of fine American family interaction, “You stupid dumbass. You’re just like your mother.” It was like watching an off-Broadway one-man show where the creative artist re-enacts his favorite episode of the Jerry Springer Show or Divorce Court, but you only get to hear one side of the story. Well, sir, this could not get any more awkward for me.  Why don't you dial up your priest next and do your phone confessional about your penchant for for latex body suits and being told what a bad boy you are.  After the man hung up on what I can only assume was now an emotionally obliterated teenager, I wanted to make at least a feeble attempt at diffusing the tension of the situation by saying something unoriginal like “Kids these days“, but realized this was not only something stupid you would have heard 30 or 40 years ago, but it would also likely incite this guy resulting in his rage turning on me. Or maybe I could have taken on the role of sick and twisted family therapist who motivates parents to destroy the fragile hearts of their children in the most efficient way possible.  "Nice work today, sir.  Nice work.  I really liked how you used curse words to break her down, and then drug in her mother for good measure although she is completly irrelevant to your conversation.  Now next time, what I'd like to see, is you ramp it up a bit on the explatives and drop a couple of F bombs.  Then, at the moment you sense her weakening and can tell that the first tear is forming in the corner of her eye, you go in for the emotional jugular with a move I like to call the Therapy Inducer.  You make the child feel overwhelming guilt about their very existence by saying that you rue the day they ever crawled forth from their mother's rotten uterus.   Now, I want you to practice that in the mirror seven times until you really believe it, and I will see you again next week."  Instead I decided to simply wait it out for my floor, and quickly made my way away from the tiny metal box of family hatred.

The Let Me Treat You Like A Bothersome Piece of Feculent Dog Matter Stuck To The Bottom Of My Very Expensive Shoe Guy

This is the individual who should be providing you with some type of service, but instead continues to talk on their headset despite your obvious presence. And in addition to rudely continuing their conversation, they consider your need for service to be as annoying and unmoving as a serf begging their liege for a scrap of food for their starving family. Today on my way home from visiting my mother (Note to self: pat yourself on the back for being such a good son), I stopped at a convenience store near my house. After picking out a large bag of fried chips and a king size candy bar, snacks sure to clog arteries, expand stomachs and cause all sort of serious maladies, I went to the counter and plopped down my “dinner” before the unsmiling male cashier. I offered up a stereotypically heterosexual male-to-male greeting of , “Hey, how’s it going?” Smiles, as I had sarcastically dubbed him in my mind, did not even give me a token verbal response such as, “Good, how ya’ doin’?” that normal social decorum would dictate, but instead responded with a nod that was completely void of any measurable level of effort and was of such insignificant bodily movement I wondered if it had been a tic in his head and neck area rather than an actual gesture of acknowledgement to what I had said. The cashier then rang up and bagged my purchases with the dexterity and speed of a strung out heroin addict. “I am off at 7:00”, he then said into the air of the convenience store, where his words mingled with the smell of body odor and old rotisserie hot dogs. It is at that time I realized Mr. Social Skills had a glowing piece of plastic on his ear. Despite being finished with the daunting task of bagging my whopping two products, the cashier clamored on with his unseen conversing partner, “Probably doing nothing tonight. Really want to go home and chill.” I thought to myself, “If you mean by doing nothing tonight, you mean not providing good customer service, you are spot on.” I barely resisted the urge to smart off and ask if he was busy next weekend, and maybe we could get together, and he could show me his whole repertoire of discourteous customer service techniques. As I stood there with an expectant look on my face awaiting my total, Captain Charisma then really turned up the a-hole meter by simply pointing to the screen with my total on it rather than vocalizing to me the actual cost of my over-priced items. I then decided to at least give him a little malicious customer behavior as payback for his non-existent customer service just so he would understood I was not pleased. I crumpled up my few bills and some change and laid it on the counter so he would have to put in some effort straightening it out and picking it up. Jerk face then had the nerve to shoot daggers at me like I am the worst customer ever. I should have reached over the counter and planted a perectly targeted 83 MPH backhand across  his “minimum wage earning, old hot dog peddling, porno magazine viewing while he is customer-free” face. As he was making change, he told the person on the other end, “Girl, I do want to see you. I am just tired.” I felt like ripping the thing out of the guys ear, and telling the girl on the other end that she is better off without this guy if he treats his significant others with the disrespect he shows to customers. But of course, I did none of that, but instead went home and stuffed my face.
　

Someone Get Me Out Of Here!

Is there anything more wonderful than spending the better part of a morning in the waiting room of a doctor’s office? Can I get an “Amen Brother!”? (crickets chirping). OK, maybe not then. What is your problem with it? The desperation, and subsequent utter despair, that you feel deep in your core every time the door to the sacred backroom opens and they call the name of some other undeserving patient that you are darn well sure you signed in before. Or is it the seemingly endless droning of the super smooth jazz remix CD that pushes you to the verge of ending it all and giving rise to cleverly crafted news headlines such as “Death By Kenny G” or “Man Killed By Elevator….Music”? While both of these issues plagued my psyche throughout my most recent visit to the doctor, my attention was at least partially diverted by some interesting personalities that I shared the waiting room with a few days ago.

There were approximately five or six people when I arrived, and approximately ten or twelve empty chairs. As soon as I sat down, one of the gentlemen across the room let loose with a nasal explosion into his mucus matted handkerchief. He then exclaimed, in an obnoxious voice, for the whole room to hear, but not directed at anyone in particular, “Well, I guess it’s hay fever season.” What is proper waiting room etiquette in this situation? Was this a comment that was supposed to be responded to by someone…anyone? Or was it just supposed to float out there in the germ soaked air of the doctor’s waiting room going unresponded to for all eternity? I really wanted to retort into the vastness of space between the room’s sickly occupants in an equally boisterous voice, but really to no one in particular in the same manner as the original comment, “Sure seems like hay fever season to me with all these olfactory catapults flinging cascading boogers and snot all over the place.” But instead of uttering any type of response, I, like everyone else present, simply looked down at my feet, kept my mouth tightly shut, and avoided eye contact with this desperate verbal fisherman who had cast out his line in hopes of reeling in some unwilling conversational partner. I did however silently thank this gentle soul for at least having some mercy on me and using his cacophony of words to drown out, for the briefest of moments, that insipid piped-in jazz music.

After settling into my normal waiting room routine of grabbing a magazine to peruse that I would never read in any other setting, in this case an out of date issue of Martha Stuart Living, a new patient entered through the office door and began the lengthy sign-in procedure. At the end of completing the form, the receptionist politely asked the man to sign at the bottom of the form. I then heard the man, who was likely in his 70’s, quip the following line with such glee and vigor that he obviously thought he was the first person in the world to ever say it, “Just sign my life away, huh?” Awww, the elderly. They really are a sad lot at times. At least the receptionist with the heart of gold gave him a pity chuckle. The rest of the crowd, including heartless yours truly, on the other hand, greeted his attempt at cleverness with a dead silence more powerful than any dramatic groan or eye roll.

As I was busying myself shooting daggers of disdain at the unoriginal old man who was shuffling across the room to find a seat, my eyes became locked on a mustached, middle-aged man who had proceeded to take an old school small black comb (you know, the kind they gave you in elementary school to tame your locks of out of control hair on school picture day) out of the back pocket of his equally old school brown corduroy pants. The man then began to unnecessarily run his comb through his perfectly manicured, feathered back golden-brown mane several times with an intent look on his face reminiscent of Marsha Brady. I could almost hear him counting the strokes in his head. Once he finished the necessary number of “comb throughs”, which apparently was fourteen, he then turned his primping attention to the fur beast that had taken up residence on his upper lip, and began to repeatedly comb this area until he looked as smooth as a 1970’s porn star. Although he looked totally acceptable before this first round of excessive grooming, I watched the inspiration for Carly Simon’s famous song repeat the process three more times during my 45 minute wait to be called into an examination room.

After a few more minutes of waiting, a portly gentlemen entered the waiting room, signed in, and immediately broke the unspoken public bathroom mandate that also applies to areas of community seating know as the “one away” rule. Everyone knows that when you enter a public bathroom, common courtesy dictates that when choosing a stall/urinal to conduct your transaction, you are to leave at least one empty space between you and any other individuals, unless impossible to do so. The same etiquette is typically observed in public seating areas, however this unrefined cretin decided to completely ignore current socially acceptable behavior and planted his posterior right next to me despite their being several other seating choices that would have allowed him to stay in keeping with the “one away” rule. I felt somewhat bad for this poor individual who evidently had some type of respiratory issue, but as the minutes dragged on, his noisy breathing in such close proximity to me began to grate on my nerves. Sad as it was, Wheezing Wendell’s labored breathing actually made me yearn for the office staff to crank up the smooth jazz. I then became convinced this guy was trying to piss me off when he kept allowing his arm to cross our furniture property line and letting his sweaty limb settle on the arm rest of my chair. If this were movie seating where there are shared arm rests, and proprietary division of the arm rests is somewhat questionable, I could somewhat understand. But the fact was that these were chairs with two arm rests assigned to each chair, and there was absolutely no ambiguity about arm rest ownership. The crazy guy might as well have been trying to sit on my lap.  Freakin' space invader. As I daydreamed about smacking the guys arm off my chair and stuffing a dirty rag down his throat to silence his wretched oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange, my name was called out by an angelic voice, and I was whisked away from hell on earth….to wait another thirty minutes for the doctor in a tiny exam room with more out of date periodicals. Just great!

7-11: Your Valentine’s Day Headquarters? You're Darn Right It Is!

***Before we even get started, I SHOULD advise the ladies out there to avert your eyes from the following entry as it will give away some very private male trade secrets, as it is a little “Lover’s Manual” of sorts I have penned to pass along to my adoring male readership. However given that the majority, if not all, of my regular readers are female, if you do not read this, it will most likely go unread by human eyes, and that would sadden my heart of hearts. So, here we are in a conundrum of epic proportions. OK, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. Do read on at your own risk if you wish, but remember you chose to do so, and once you look behind the Wizard of Oz’ curtain, things can’t be unseen***

So guys, it is getting to be that time of year again. Love is in the air, and your special sweetie will be expecting something special this Valentine’s Day. Yes, besides checking yourself for testicular cancer. While at 7-11 this morning purchasing my coffee, I noticed at the counter a plastic heart shaped box filled with rose petals. My first instinct was that this is so sad that some poor schmuck would buy rose petals from 7-11 to spread around the bedroom for a romantic evening on Valentine’s Day. However, as I looked around the store, I began to realize that 7-11 could the be the answer frustrated men all over the world have been looking for. Pulling off a successful Valentine’s Day can be an arduous task, and while most men love their significant others very much, it can be such a stressful time for us fellows running around from store to store picking up supplies to make the night a magical one. What I suggest is a revolutionary convenience store-based approach to Valentine’s Day where all your purchases are made at a store such as 7-11. I guarantee the ease, and brilliance, of this approach will leave her smiling and you with decreased blood pressure (except in that certain area. Wink, wink!) Without further ado, I present the 7-11 Valentine’s Night of Romance Package (cue harp music):

1) Start with the aforementioned rose petals. Spread them all about the bed and bedroom floor. Heck, buy two packages. We will be saving money here versus those over-priced holiday stores, anyway. ***Insider’s Tip #1: Just make sure to buy the rose petals only a day or two early. The ones I saw today are sure to be dried up and nasty looking ten days from now on Valentine’s Day. Remember, unless you are dating a Goth, dead flowers will probably offend most women (see above picture for what you are NOT looking for)

2) Purchase a couple of Bic lighters, some scotch tape, a roll of aluminum foil from aisle three and grab two small sized slurpee cups with accompanying domed lids. Light your lighter and tape down the button to maintain the flame for the evening. Use the aluminum foil to wrap your cup to disguise the tell-tale slurpee insignia, stick the lighter inside, and cover with the plastic domed lid. Bam! You have a beautiful candle holder, whose domed lid diffuses light throughout the room and creates a romantic ambience.

3) So you say your special someone really likes chocolate on Valentine‘s Day, but you just can’t see spending $30 for a pound of gourmet chocolates that your woman will end up berating you for buying a few days later when her jeans don’t fit because the glutton decided to scarf the whole package in one sitting. The simple fix: purchase a Snicker’s bar, cut it into bite size pieces, and wrap each piece in the left over aluminum foil from step #2. Not only is this confectionary solution easy on your wallet, it allows your honey to maintain her diminutive derriere. Don’t have a candy dish at home you say? Whatever will you do? Well, you can’t just go throwing the candies all over the room. You have gone through the painstaking process of hand wrapping your chocolates, and only a suitable presentation box will do. Purchase a flip-top box of the cheapest cigarettes possible from the cashier, toss the cigs in the trash (unless you smoke I guess), wrap your box in…..you guessed it, the aluminum foil (isn’t the guy who created aluminum foil an absolute genius), cut a heart out of your receipt paper and tape it to the front of the box. Simply place your candies inside, and she’ll be gushing with delight over her quaintly decorated box of sweet treats.

4) Swing by the dairy case and pick up some whipped cream for naughty time. You know what I’m talking about!

5) For most women, music can play an essential role in feeling amorous towards their mate. Titillate her auditory senses by purchasing one of those CD’s they sometimes have in racks by the magazines. Sure, they are almost always leftover CD’s from 1993 and often contains songs by artists you have never heard of, but at a cost of only $5.99, you will definitely get a great return on investment. ***Insider’s Tip #2: Mood Killer Alert! Already have the CD in the CD player, and ditch the CD case in the trash. Certain peril is to befall your night of love if your passion partner sees a compilation CD case emblazoned with the title “Songs For Knockin' Boots”

 

6) For those of you with a lady that has a less-than-innocent side and enjoys a smattering of erotic literature now and again, I would suggest a private reading session from one of the numerous lust laden letters authored by the deviant readers of the plastic-encased pornographic periodicals that can be purchased from their not so cleverly hidden position behind the counter. ***Insider’s Tip #3: Always, always, always read with your clothes on. Sharp edged paper in the magazines can result in debilitating paper cuts to sensitive parts of the unclothed body that can result in several days of required recuperation time.

7) Loosen things up with a bottle of wine or champagne from the cold box. Stray away from beer, malt liquor, items in a 40 oz. bottle and wine coolers. Your lady will appreciate the upgraded purchase for this special occasion. ***Insider’s Tip #4 (last and final tip, so pay attention): Like tip #2 above, preparation is key. As convenience stores do not have a reputation for carrying wines that cater to the distinguished connoisseur, it is suggested that you pour the glasses of wine ahead of time, and dispose of the bottle (no, wrapping it in aluminum foil will not work this time). If your companion is not educated about wines, and may not know from the brand it’s level of quality, you can safely keep the bottle, however it is strongly suggested you remove the $3.99 price tag that contains the 7-11 logo.

8) It is going to be a long night of passion, so stock up on packets of Horny Goat Weed, Manhood Maximizer or any of the other myriad of non-FDA approved coital concoctions that are carried at the checkout counter.

Your lady in your arms. Check. The scene is set. Check. Sounds like everything's covered. On to the love making. Oh Thank Heaven!