Mean Spirits

I briefly posted a column entitled “Oh Yeah?” last week, then took it down after my wife said it seemed mean-spirited. After I read it over, I had to agree. It mostly consisted of things I've refrained from saying aloud to people who commit the increasingly common sin of annoying me.

Unfortunately, as I grow older, I find my baseline dudgeon level is dangerously high and my sharp tongue slips out of its scabbard too easily.

One of the “wish I'd said” exchanges in that self-censored essay went like this:

Annoying guy: “I'm a big picture person, I just need someone to fill in the details.”

Me:  “Actually, you are a lazy, self-absorbed, vacuous dilettante who wants other people to clean up for you after you smear your own excrement on the wall and call it art.”

Upon reflection, that does seem a little harsh.

In general, my biggest problem these days is impatience. When a telephone salesperson calls, then asks if I'd mind holding, I tend to ask them to please hold while I transfer their call to the dial tone.

I know telephone sales people are underpaid and likely to be supporting young children who need expensive, life-saving operations; but I'm also becoming dreadfully aware of my own ticking countdown clock.

Stealing my money is one thing, but wasting my time is stealing something that is both precious and irreplaceable. These days, I am much less patient with people who are late for appointments than I used to be. I took some pains, recently, to explain to someone that when he kept me waiting, he was showing that he thought my time was worth less than his.

I'm also starting to get impatient with people who call, wanting something that could be handled quickly and easily, but who feel obligated to begin with a bit of pallid small talk first. When someone asks how I'm doing, obviously not caring in the least, I've been sorely tempted to let them know in excruciating detail. But experience holds me back.

There was the time I gave a friendly wave and a “How are you doing?” to a nice fellow who had recently waited on my wife and me at a furniture store. It was a beautiful day, I was on foot and he was in his car, stopped at a red light downtown with his windows rolled down.

“Not so good,” he shouted back to me. “My brother died last night.” Then he burst into tears, and the traffic light turned green.

I really hadn't cared how he was doing, other than to wish all humankind a nice day, but after I asked and got the answer, we both felt terrible.

Revealing? I think so, but not in the way I expected when I first wrote it.

Of course people are no more or less annoying now they've ever been.

Reminders of my mortality abound – seeing parents and old friends disappear from the earth, and hearing dinner party conversions turn into obituaries of the latest local deaths and disabilities. Mortality's nagging drumbeat sets us on edge, causing everyday tickles and taunts and jostles and bumps to provoke disproportionate responses. 

What's really annoying me, of course, is not the minor inconveniences and delays of daily life, but the realization that I've already wasted so many precious hours and days and years doing nonsensical things that neither gave me joy nor made the world a better place.

So I've resolved to stop letting so much time slip by unused, to meditate some of my impatience into zippity doo dah, and to try to keep a rein on my inner cranky old man. Sure, he may sneak out and cause trouble from time to time, but he doesn't get to take over.

Salesperson: “Excuse me sir, could I interest you —“

Cranky old man: “Kid, you couldn't interest me if you dressed up like a peacock and farted the Star Spangled Banner.”

Me: “Um . . . what I meant was, perhaps you could show me something in a Harris Tweed that would go well with a good book and good friends.”

After all. Time's a-wastin'.