The people of the south unite!

Posted on Sun 02/19/06 in South Florida

Today, it seemed like the people of South Florida were teamed up against me. It was like they all decided to act more brainless and idiotic. While I am used to the regular nuisance of living with the scum of this area, I really felt pinned today.

My day started out great. I made breakfast for my deserving wife. We decided to take our son to see his grandparents and that we’d run a few errands on the way.

My wife, son and I all showered up and dressed nicely for our winter venture—winter?—well, it was a cool 78 degrees today. To no fault of his own, while I was feeding Ethan a bottle, he peed his diaper and managed to soak his fresh clothes and mine. Pretty funny, actually.

I then struggled in the heat to transfer the car set base back to my wife’s car, since I had used hers to drive across Alligator Alley last week. Neither of our cars has the LATCH system, so it is a battle with the seatbelt and belt lock to assure the base is properly installed. TIP OF THE WEEK: If you are planning to have kids, buy a car with the LATCH system! Installing a car seat base without the LATCH system seems to raise the temperature about 20 degrees.

Now sweating, we set out for the world. Today would be our first visit to the new Costco by our house. The parking lot was packed. As I traversed the isles looking for a spot, Moron #1 found me. As I came around the corner of the isle, I stopped as I saw a pickup truck with his bed door down backing up out of a spot. I reversed a bit, but I was limited because traffic was moving on the road I had turned from. I was sure he would see me, but I honked my horn a bit. He kept coming. I was right behind him. I began to blare on my horn. He kept coming. BAM! He backed his bed right smack into my headlight. Dumbfounded, I got out.

“What the hell? Didn’t you hear me honking,” I yelled at the man who emerged from the truck.

“No,” he responded.

“How could you not hear my horn? Don’t you look in your rear view mirror when you back up?” His wife got out of the car. I asked her, “You didn’t hear the horn either? Did you have the radio blaring?”

They looked dumb… I mean, the look on their faces could be put next to the definition of “dumb” in the dictionary. Disgusted, I leaned into my car to discuss options with my wife. The truck drove away. I took down the license plate, but, really, what was I going to do? The headlight was pushed in a bit, but the cops wouldn’t do much for a parking lot accident.

I cussed a bit about how I couldn’t believe that he didn’t see me, and we entered Costco. It wasn’t much better inside. Beth and I shook and dodged for our lives, and we barely made it out. The Fresh Market was even worse. I believe that the people generally shopping there are fall into one or more of three stereotypes:

1. Rich (and snobby)
2. Old (and blind)
3. Meat head (big muscles, small brains)

Oh, I suppose I could add “people who wear sunglasses indoors,” because A LOT of people were wearing sunglasses inside the already-dark food warehouse. Mostly, they were older men, probably wearing shades so their wives wouldn’t see them starring at the young hotties who had just come from the gym across the parking lot. Regardless of the reason, it seemed like all the “sunglasses” peeps were running their carts into everything, knocking down stacks of bananas or a crate of granola and tofu soufflé.

I stood in one spot for a long time, close to a display and out of the way of everyone…. or, so I thought. Beth was running around getting stuff, and Ethan and I were holding the cart. He sits inside the cart in his car seat. He loves it. So, I’m just standing there watching some balding guy with a Starbucks coffee cup rant and rave about how stupid everything there was…. and BAM!!! Some lady going way to fast and wearing dark shades slammed her cart into mine, startling Ethan. I wanted to choke her out or apply the left arm bar (a wrestling move) or a right arm bar (similar to the left arm bar). She looked startled, like if she didn’t cram a dozen prunes down her throat in the next 10 seconds, she would start projectile vomiting all over the place. Ethan appeared ok, so I let this one go.

The last stop one the way home from Grandma’s was back to CompUSA to pickup another hard drive. I’ll spare you the boring story, which ends like this… I waited about 1 minute less than my breaking point for a manager to come to get me a hard drive from the lockup bin in the back room. As I waited, I watched the manager sit in her office, ignoring several pages for a manager to help me. I had to walk into her secret cubby hole and ask her to get me the drive. She hadn’t heard the pages. So, what is the point of having the system?

I really hate to complain, but the Internet always wants to hear me out. Dinner was so good tonight.