Read this slowly, using the voice of “Agent Smith” from “The Matrix.” Also, it helps if you have a sneer on your face as you read it.
If you’ve never seen the movie, well hell…just move along please. Nothin to see here…

They are all around you. They walk through life self-absorbed to the point of narcosis, not knowing the frustration they bring to others. Not knowing that around them, the world continues to move, except for those unlucky few souls forced to move within their sphere of influence.

You, who I speak of, probably don’t even know that you affect the planet such as you do. Happily wrapped up in your moment, you cost others untold amounts of life while waiting on you to become aware. You are:

• The person talking on the cell phone in the grocery store blocking the entire aisle with your cart
• Sitting in your car, digging through your purse, or reading a book at a stop light that has already turned green
• The parent who parks their car under the covered breezeway at the daycare office and then disappears inside for 25 minutes while others pull in behind you and subsequently get blocked in until your eventual return
• The person at the gym who has left his towel on a bench as he wanders off to use yet another machine, only returning a few minutes later annoyed that, in his absence, someone else dared move his towel and use the machine or bench
• The person ordering eight different items from the deli counter when there is only one person working
• NOT starting to fill out your check at the checkout, rather waiting until you receive the total to even put the date on the check or sign your name
• Sitting in your car at a busy gas station. You finished filling your vehicle five minutes ago, but you’re too busy doing other things to bother moving your car
• Forcing others to sit through meetings listening to a speech they’ve already heard, just so it looks like you had a good showing
• The person on the escalator standing in the very middle so that those behind you, who don’t like to stand still, can’t get past
• At the ATM machine, checking the balance on your five different accounts while also talking to your sister, who is also in the car. Meanwhile, the ATM is flashing, “DO YOU WANT YOUR CARD BACK” waiting on your action, which of course, you don’t notice
• Stoned and so dimwittedly slow that you are basically of no use to anyone around you
• Clueless to the point of not picking up on the fact that the person on the other end of your chat client, is responding to you in one or two word responses in an attempt at signifying that they are too busy to care about what happened to your neighbor’s cat
• Driving the speed limit on a lonely road as fifteen cars pile up behind you

The rest of the world would like to ask you to WAKE UP! You are not the only person on the road, at the grocery store, trying to fix your cable bill or any number of other time-consuming tasks each of us face on a daily basis. If you can’t do this, stay home. Do your shopping from Amazon and The Home Shopping Network and generally just stay out of the way.

The rest of us thank you!