Clueless Drivers, Rude People, the Dorky Hat and Other Drivel

I know how grumpy old men get that way, cuz I”m one of them.  Here's an example of how that happens.

A couple of weeks ago I was on my way to do a volunteer project at the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden.  I was going to enable one of the raised beds for folks who are too handicapped to bend over to weed the garden and things like that.  This was on a day when the high temperature was expected to be 106 and it was probably the 40th day of 100 plus degree highs we had had this summer and maybe the 25th in a row.  At a quarter till nine it was already in the low nineties and, despite the fact that it hasn't rained here since Sam Houston died, it was humid as hell.

As I pulled up in the left turn lane to tun onto the main street of the little town that is our county seat, I saw that an eighteen-wheeler was about to turn right in order to go the opposite direction from which I was headed at that time.  So instead of pulling right up to the light, where the big rig would have to drive over the left front fender of my pickup in order to make the turn, I stayed back a few car lengths from the light until the truck got around the corner.  As soon as the truck was past me I pulled forward to make the turn, because the light was now green for me.  As I  moved forward a thirty-something woman in an SUV with the gas door hanging open and a kid about to fall out of a child seat in the back cut in front of me so close that I couldn't see the back of her car.  I'm not sure what she was driving with because she was talking on a cell phone tucked between her cheek and shoulder, putting on makeup with one hand and working on her pompoms or something with the other.  Just at that moment the light turned red for our lane and a big pickup cut across her bow on the cross street so she had to stop.  At this point Ms. I'mWayMoreImportantThanAnyoneElseInTheWorld looked in her rear view mirror and gave me a dirty look like I had done something to keep her from zooming through the intersection as she had planned.  At least to the extent that she was capable of planning anything.  I, of course, responded by manually reminding her that her IQ was 1.  Yeah, I know I was on a humanitarian mission here, but benevolence only goes so far with me.

So the light finally changed and the clueless wench got around the corner, but then she drove at about fifteen miles an hour while she searched the roads on her right looking for the spot where she wanted to turn in.  Of course when she made the turn she didn't signal.  I know, I know, I should have passed her, but I was going to turn right not too far up the road and, because she was driving so slowly at that point, all of the cars behind me where zipping into the inside lane and I couldn't get around her.

I have always felt that in situations like this you should be able to get something akin to a hunting license that would have a tag on it like you get with a deer license and you could use that any one time you choose during the year to accost a lousy driver, take their keys away and staple a tag to their ear that says “Driving while dumbassed" and their license would be suspended for the rest of the year.  Of course, there are times when someone might want to use one of those on me so maybe that's not such a good idea.  Never mind.

OK, so here's a place where one of those licenses would still be a good idea and it doesn't even involve driving.

My wife and I took a BOGO coupon to Baskin-Robbins last week to get something cold because it was another 100 plus degrees day.  The joint was packed so there was no place to sit and eat the ice cream inside.  They did have two or three tables outside though, so we decided to brave the heat and eat our sundaes there. 

Now this B-R is in a strip mall outside the entrance to a subdivision.  The rest of the mall is populated by real estate offices, Vietnamese man-pedi places and your friendly independent insurance agent.  There is a restaurant at the other end of the strip but the Baskin-Robbins is clearly the only place in the strip that has outside eating. 

After we sat down we smelled cigarette smoke and noticed that this old we-live-in-an-expensive-retirement-community-looking dude was smoking outside a liquor store about twenty feet upwind from us.  Fortunately the wind was kind of gusting, so we didn't get enveloped in a cloud of fumes, but we were still getting second-hand smoke.  I was going to say something to him but after a couple of (not very) discrete coughs from my wife, the guy moved further up the strip where his smoking wasn't as much of a problem.

Just as Ellie and I were able to breathe an untainted sigh of relief a thirty-something woman (starting to see a pattern here?) who was so skinny she looked as though she must subsist totally on “reds, cocaine and vitamin C” (apologies to the Grateful Dead) and who had some sort of tattoo that started at one ankle, twined around her bony leg, and emerged from her tube top somewhere near the opposite shoulder before wrapping around her scrawny neck, pulled up in some kind of Japanese faux Jeep with out of state plates.  She had a cell phone tucked between her cheek and shoulder (more patterns), a freshly lit cigarette in one hand and with the other hand she dragged a small child of indeterminate race and sex that never stopped whining up and down in front of the B-R while she blabbed away on her phone and smoked that whole damn cigarette.  I'm not sure Ellie and I even got second hand smoke from that one because she was so close that it was almost first hand.

Meantime a blue-haired woman came out of B-R with a couple of cones to go and got in one side of an H-2 while the smoky old dude from up the strip got in the other.  So it turns out that he had to have a quick cigarette before his ice cream cone, just like the illustrated woman with the whiny kid had to have one more cigarette before she took him in to get his ice cream fix.

I'm not so sure that the hunting license/tag thing is the best cure for inconsiderate SOBs like those two.  I'm thinking maybe a Winchester Defender loaded with three-inch magnum buckshot.  After all, they were killing Ellie and me with all that cigarette smoke and, this being Texas, I should have been within my rights to shoot them in defense of self and family.

Speaking of family: at times that's another source of irritation for us grumpy old galoots.

I think I mentioned once or twice that it has been gawdawful hot this summer.  OK, I realize that Central Texas, where I live, is farther south than northern Mexico.  It's farther south than the south coasts of Mississippi and Alabama and about at the same latitude as the south coast of the Florida panhandle and not much north of South Texas, which is farther south than any part of the continental US except for the very southern tip of Florida from Miami on south, and that's probably going to be under water in thirty years anyway and then Texas will be the southernmost state in the continental United States.  So it's always hot here in the summertime.  These days, however, we are on some kind of warming trend and the prediction I've heard is that Central Texas will be as hot and dry as West Texas in thirty years or so. 

The bottom line here is that you really need to protect yourself from the sun when you go outside, and Ellie and I are outside a lot.  Normally I wear a gimme cap when we go out.  This summer, though, I've had a problem where the tops of my ears have gotten sunburned because they aren't covered by gimme caps.  So I picked up this sort of Palm Beachy thing that has a brim that goes all the way around.  Ellie is loath to have me wear it when she is with me because she says it looks dorky on me.  She's right; but then I look dorky in any hat.  Come to think of it, most of the time I look pretty dorky whether I'm wearing a hat or not; but for some reason she thinks this particular hat is way dorkier than most.  On me.  It would probably look good on that guy in the commercials on TV who pushes XX cerveza and says “stay thirsty my friends”.

I tend to favor function over form, so I don't much care whether I look dorky in that hat.  It keeps the sun off me and keeps my ears from getting sunburned and that's all I care about.  So I wear it.  Still my wife and I have a big debate over it every time I bring it along.  At least we did until a couple of weeks ago when I was wearing it while we toured Presidio La Bahia.  As we walked along the fort walls a thirty-something woman with a phone pressed between her cheek and shoulder passed us in the opposite direction.  As she came abreast of us she smiled and said “Nice hat”.  I'm pretty sure she wasn't being sarcastic; but I was kind of grumpy the rest of the day anyway.  I'm not sure why.  I think it was the heat.