Meet The Candidates Then Rinse.

HOORAY FOR ME! I’m getting the chance to be a loving and supportive husband tonight. I’m going with my wife, the lovely and involved, Dawn, to a “Meet the Candidate Night” here in Terre Haute (That’s French for “Vote for me. I can smile.”)

My wife trusts me. She knows that I will behave myself in public and not truthfully answer any questions asked of me by the candidates.

We have gone to events like this before. I smile and I shake hands with people I wouldn’t ordinarily touch without wearing a Hazmat Suit. I quietly sip at my plastic cup of Diet Coke.

I’m a good husband.

Leave Me Alone!

SOME MORNINGS I JUST FEEL LIKE SLAPPING SOME PEOPLE upside the head and down the other side. Not out of any anger, but as an attempt to get them to wake up and smell the coffee – the coffee that I am trying to drink in peace.

Almost every morning lately I’m in my corner at St. Arbucks and no matter how hard I try to ignore it – I cannot avoid hearing the conversations of other people. The problem arises when all they want to rant about is Politics and Politicians. I can’t think of anything that I want to avoid more at 6:30 in the morning. The sun isn’t even up yet, let alone me. At that time of day I’d prefer a little music or the voices in my head who tell me “knock – knock” jokes.

I, The Jury

EARLY THIS MORNING I WAS QUIETLY SLUMPED OVER MY COFFEE when I overheard a conversation from the next table. It seems that one of the men sitting there had been called for Jury Duty. My ears began to twitch and I inched a little closer.

The gentleman said that he reported to the County Courthouse the day before anxious and willing to do his civic duty. Apparently that was when things began to fall apart.

Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

SOME THINGS JUST NEVER SINK IN: The concept of a Beer Milkshake, Pauly Shore, People who believe that the earth is flat.

The Beer Milkshake is just not feasible without my gag reflex going into overdrive. Pauly Shore – I don’t know where to begin while sober, and the whole Flat Earth movement??? Well, maybe if I lived in Kansas, but…

Last night we were sitting around and my wife, the lovely and Tele-visually adventuresome, Dawn, had the TV remote in her hand. Somehow she located a program discussing the resurgence of the belief that the Earth is not a globe, but a disk whizzing through space like a Frisbee. My digestive tract slipped into Neutral and my brain into Reverse.

Everybody, Shut up!

I’M FEELING CROWDED THIS MORNING. I’m feeling that way because I am being crowded today. On most days at 6:30 AM I have my writing corner all to myself, but today for some reason, this is the most popular place in town. Is St. Arbucks giving something away for free today?

With the crowding comes noise – People Noise. The usual background noise in the morning is made up of cars and trucks driving past, but this morning I can’t even hear the traffic going by. Instead all that I can hear is the people sitting at the next table. Three people all trying to talk at once. They are all so excited. Why I can’t understand. They are all jabbering about Real Estate. Not a topic I would usually associate with such unbridled excitement. To each his own I suppose.

Don’t Panic

 

“I REFUSE TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION ON THE GROUNDS THAT I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER.”

— Douglas Adams

I wish that more people would adopt that practice. As each day slops over into the next I become more and more exhausted by people who think that they have THE answer to, not only every question that people ask, but also to the questions that nobody bothers asking.