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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States Society

There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern.

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…

image 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!

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Marriage

How Chris lost his groove…

After writing yesterday’s blog, I got to thinking about my quick comment about the 18-year old beverage cart girl at the golf course. Then I remembered the details surrounding this little encounter and after running it through my head a dozen times, I realized that I am totally clueless around other women.

Let me explain…

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Hot ChicksOn Sunday, I was sharing a golf cart with a friend of mine. He’s a bachelor; successful, reasonably good looking, etc. He’s also a known horndog with two houses in TX, but he lives here in Atlanta, and I’m pretty sure he has women in both locales.

On the course Sunday, we were rounding about the 9th hole when the beverage cart came motoring up the hill towards us. We were both frustrated enough with our game by then to need (YES! “need”) an alcoholic beverage, so we hailed down the cart.

For the uninitiated, it’s normal practice for the golf course manager to employ hot college-age girls to run these carts. It’s not because they are trying to exploit women; no, it’s more like the “Hooters” philosophy:

Hot girls = More Business

So, it’s simple economics.

However, today’s beverage cart girl was actually two girls, a brunette and a blonde. The brunette was driving, and her friend, the blonde, sat beside her with a blanket thrown over her legs to presumably, stay warm in the drizzly, gray soup we were playing in.

As the cart pulled up beside ours, the blonde said in a very attractive southern drawl, “Can I get ya’ll something?”

To which my friend replied, “Can I get a Diet Coke?”
Not wanting to be the first guy to get a beer, I seconded his request and the blonde removed her blanket and got up to fish our drinks from the back cooler. It was at this time, that I “noticed” the blonde and I looked over at my friend to see his reaction and as expected, he raised his eyebrows in surprise and looked over at me. We both gave that, “Yep, I agree” nod and walked around to pay the lady.

Now this is where I got all fuzzy. After noticing how cute she was, my married-ness kicked in and I found myself unable to look at her again. I couldn’t look at her eyes, I couldn’t look at her…shirt…nuthin! I also apparently went stone deaf! Because, according to my friend, she then sassed the both of us with a, “What’re you boys doin’, watchin’ your figures?”

Now, even the jaded among you must agree that was a flirtatious opening statement if you’ve ever heard one and had I been younger and single (and not deaf), I would have responded in kind. As it was, I was too busy acting like some gangly, uncomfortable teenager putzing around in my golf bag in the back of the cart. So much so that I didn’t hear my friend and her strike up a conversation, despite her being about 20 years younger than him.

The next memory I have is of us puttering away and my friend saying, “Wow, they sure grow them big up here in rural Georgia,” speaking not of her weight or height, but of her…well, you know.

Thinking about all the many the couple of times I’m reasonably confident that I’ve been hit on by other women since I’ve been married, and knowing how I react around good looking women, I have to say that, should (Heaven forbid) anything ever happen to make me a single guy again, I’m pretty sure I’d become a reclusive hermit; spending my days in the gym and my nights in front of the computer surfing for gym clothes. Because I seem to have lost all the Game that I ever had. And I’m not talking about Golf here now either.

I’ve really gotta get outta the house more.