Things That Annoy Me That I’ll Never Be Able To Understand
Not all of my columns make it into print. I have ideas that are like the little engine that could, huffing and puffing at the station raring to go. I can’t quite get up enough steam to send them churning down the tracks.
Often what seems like brilliance in my mind ends up in Trash on the computer. Sometimes snippets of an idea that cannot sustain a whole column refuse to let go and get filed in a “leftovers” folder, or as we used to call when emptying the refrigerator – “mus’goes.”
One of my “mus’goes” has the heading, “Things that annoy me and/or things I’ll never understand.” Usually they amount to the same thing.
It is common knowledge that all you east coasters believe the country is tilted left and all the fruits and nuts slid down to California. You’re not far off in that belief. Many of those trail mix ingredients ended up in Santa Cruz, about an hour north of where I live.
The World Cup of people watching is sitting on a bench on Pacific Street in Santa Cruz. In the blink of an eye one is swept back to 1969 as aged men wearing tie-dyed clothes, what’s left of their gray hair tied in a ponytail, parading by in their Birkenstocks. I saw one guy, a contemporary of mine, dressed that way, headband and all, slowly traipsing Pacific Street with the aide of a walker, forever in search of Woodstock. It’s not only men. Women with long flowing gray hair dressed like Margaret Hamilton in “The Wizard of Oz,” are a common sight. Good old Santa Cruz, where colorfully painted VW buses with window curtains go to die.
Something I cannot understand is women wearing designer jeans with designer rips, tears, and holes in them. One stylist on the question and answer website, Quara,said, “The ripped jeans are a status symbol showing the wearer is industrious and is a good hard worker and has muscle, power, endurance and determination to get the job done.” She left out … is pretentious, has too much money to spend and looks absurd. Supposedly they make a statement, which says, “I’m a very posh person but wearing $200 distressed jeans proves that I identify with the hoi polloi”. Ahh, living proof that P.T. Barnum nailed it when he said there’s a sucker born every minute.
Something else I’ll never understand that fits into the annoying category is music played in restaurants. Restaurants are noisy places to begin with. Why play music to add to the noise? First of all, you can’t possibly play music eclectic enough to appeal to everyone. Most people go to restaurants, not only to dine, but to converse, especially people trying to catch up with each other’s lives. According to the National Restaurant Association music can be a powerful tool in determining whether profits are enhanced by either fast table turnovers or by encouraging patrons to remain for long periods of time. Had they asked me I would have told them that if I wanted music, I would have stayed home and listened to music I like, played over a better music system, while munching on pizza.
Athletes who are not kempt annoy me. Yes, kempt is a word. The opposite is unkempt, which describes many professional athletes. I’m sure they all make enough money to afford professional grooming, yet many of them avoid kemptness (I made up that one.) QUESTION: Ladies, would you kiss James Harden of the Houston Rockets? After he’s had something to eat you might find enough “mus’goes” in his beard to feed a family of four. His beard has blasted off his face like a rocket headed out on its own, perhaps to see if there is hairy life on another planet. A trim is beyond a barber. You need a lawn service, James.
While many professional baseball teams arrive at the ballpark on a bus, former Phillie, Jason Werth always looked like he came to the game on a raft. Many current players look like they should carry their gear in bindles rather than suitcases, to match their Hobo appearances.
So that’s what’s been annoying me. Don’t even get me started on people who take up two parking spaces, finding the start on a roll of duct tape, smokers, people who talk loudly on cell phones, and Justin Bieber. Sheesh!
Contact Jerry at jerry@jerygervase.com
