Summer Gripes
Maybe it’s the August inferno or the ubiquitous negative news, but even minor nuisances can group up, making life seem like a powder keg ready to blow.
It’s just time to vent with summer gripes.
For example, seems like the more I buy takeout or take the grandkids to their favorite spots, the more I’m confronted with foil packets of condiments. These gizmos often require your teeth to rip open, resulting in squirts of soy sauce or mustard on your clothes; or there are the plastic mini containers with foil tops that are impossible to peel open without the same result.
And pump action bottles. Who invented those? Invariably the hand soap or lotion once transported out of the store will not open, no matter how hard you press and turn resulting in having to unscrew the top and use it like a dip stick.
Maybe it’s because they’ve been hauled to the stores in hot trucks, but half the time the plastic caps on water or beverage bottles are melted on. I’ve even resorted to trying to slice open the plastic perforated line, sometimes drawing blood, or trying to microwave the bottle to see if something will yield a turnable cap.
Yuk to people who are “special cases” and get in the express lane with an entire cart or try to board planes with three or four items. They try to bring their “comfort” peacock, parakeet, or hamster on the airlines, which are mercifully trying to get out of the Noah’s Ark business.
They wear inordinate amounts of colognes, flash their body parts, which would be a kindness to cover, or loudly talk on their cellphones while ignoring their shrieking kids. They text until they get to the front of the line to order food and then take 10 minutes asking those same shrieking kids what they want to eat.
They take up two parking places. At filling stations they put in the nozzle then wander into the store for 15 minutes instead of moving their tanked up car. They take babies and tots to R-rated movies.
And finally, who is in charge of timing the traffic lights in Dallas? How many times do I sit behind a red light maddenly looking at a green arrow with no cars in the turn lane to the Tollway? Traffic Boss needs a performance review. I hate committees, but that’s one I would volunteer to be on. Harrumpf.
Columnist Len Bourland can be reached at [email protected]
