I am feeling poisonous today--as if, if I bit somebody, they would DIE. So I decided to go with the flow and use my negative energy for something mildly constructive: venting.
So, without further ado:
1. New Yorker fiction. Beautifully written, elegant paragraphs about people who don't do anything, which never comes to any conclusion, which sucks me into reading it and then pounding my head against a concrete wall wailing, "Why? Why?" over the hour of my life I will never get back.
2. People who park their grocery carts athwart the aisle and stand there in rapt contemplation of ramen noodles (chicken or beef?) while yakking on their cellphones, who then look at you like you have some nerve asking them to move.
3. People who do 45 in the left hand lane (sound of SuperBowl-sized stadium full of people cheering)
4. The editor who took months to read my manuscript and then sent back what I wrote without a single constructive suggestion except to say she didn't like it, and who did this over and over, who wrote insulting e-mails about me to third parties and cc'd me without, apparently, realizing how insulting that was (even though this person is supposed to be a genius, go figure), who took weeks or months to return phone calls or e-mails and who, after two years, had the amazing gall to tell me that I had been "wasting time" and had not fulfilled my contract.
5. People who listen to what I say and then repeat it, slightly altered, as if it were some new and brilliant thought they had just come up with. And who probably actually think this.
6. Men who interrupt women without having a clue that's what they are doing, but who listen respectfully when another man is talking.
7. Women whose delicate sensibilities are so offended by the idea of their perfect, sanitary posterior coming into contact with a public toilet that they hover over it instead, spraying urine all over the seat for me to sit in when I come in after them. Notice to you ladies: of the 15 million cases of clap recorded in the last decade, not ONE was contracted by sitting on a public toilet.
8. Eight year old kids who say, "Pull my finger." Especially when I taught them to do it. (I plead temporary insanity.)
9. Black people who interpret every boneheaded thing I do as evidence of racism, especially that lady in Payless last week who got all huffy when I didn't see her for a moment and blocked her view, when I had one saleslady and two kids all yapping at me at the same time, and who refused to accept my apology because, clearly, my failure to see her was prima facie evidence that black people are invisible to white people, which historically she has a point about, but in this particular instance just wasn't the case, so get OVER it, honey.
10. Kids who say, "MOM!" from two rooms away, expecting me to magically appear at their elbow as if I were some genie who existed to fulfill their every wish, and who, when I say, "I'm in here if you want to talk to me," respond by saying, "WHAT?"
Okay. That's it. I feel better.