Sunday, February 17, 2008

TIRED OF IT

While my car had a 2-hour spa treatment, I settled inside the Firestone lobby to get a little work done and read a dog-eared fitness magazine that my laptop has been battering for about a month now while it waited in my bag to tell me that I don’t eat right or exercise enough.


Waiting with me was a gray-haired man with a baseball cap, glaring eyes, and a rumbly tummy, a 23-or-so-year-old mother with a rowdy, garrulous 3-year-old and a silent 8-month-old, and grandfatherly man in cowboy boots with iPod earbuds glued in each ear.

I was tippity-tapping on my laptop and intermittently looking up at the oddidies of Monk PI playing on the small television. The baseball cap-clad fellow was downright engrossed in the show. We were a bunch of humans coexisting as humans must do.


During a commercial break, the young mother rose from her seat, walked to the television, reached up to the buttons and started channel surfing. Ahem? What? I didn’t say anything, but my thoughts twirled in confusion. Do people actually do that? Just waltz to a public TV and change the channel? The men seated near me didn’t say anything. And the mother didn’t say anything either.

She didn’t ask, Hey, folks, I realize you’re watching Monk right now, but to keep my little monkey from crawling on all the tires around this place, I want to see if I can find some cartoons to engage him—that okay? Nope. She just changed the channel. And then, rather than the dulcet tones of Monk’s obsessions and compulsions to lull me through my work, my ears were assalted with the squeaks and sqwaks of SpongeBob SquarePants.


Nope, I’m not kidding. Had she asked, we other three humans (I’m voching for Baseball Cap and Cowboy Boots right now) would have said, Oh! Sure, change the channel, no problem. Gee, sure looks like you have your hands full—anything we can do to help, well, we’re willing!

Didn’t happen that way though, and I must admit, the lack of regard for everyone else waiting for their autos was a little off-putting, so off-putting that I felt I had to write it all down and post for you perusal. I think there’s something wrong with me; I shouldn’t have been irked.

3 comments:

Courtney said...

Hey, wait a second...that was you at Firestone today? I would have asked.

Just Sue said...

Ohhh, anyone who interfer with MONK would have had induced my ire. I think you should have gotten up and changed it to something other than Spongebob...and said, "anything, but Spongebob". Yeh, bring on the contention!

M to the E to the R to the I said...

Oh Megan, you are too dang funny. I agree, she should have asked. It is ruse to just assume you own the place and take over like that. Always ask. Even at the Gym, when people just waltz in and change the channel on one of the 100 T.V.'s, just because there are 100 of them, doesn't mean nobody was watching that! Drives me nuts. I also loved you "Tidbit", I have some myself and I have to day they are pretty great! Now, if you have a remedy for my feet sliding forward in peep-toe shoes, you are my hero.