Christmas can bring out the Jerk in some people…

I love Christmas shopping.  I love it!  After having shoots shoved under my toenails; salt rubbed in scrapes; and being kicked square in the nuts by NFL Pro Bowl alternate, Kris Brown, (GO TEXANS!), Christmas shopping is my favorite thing ever!

OK, I don’t love it…I really don’t like it; but at least I keep it to myself, unlike the jerk I encountered at the store earlier.  The aisles were packed, as is to be expected, and I was looking for some Transformers and Justice League action figures (umm….for my nieces and nephews….right) and there were some kids running up and down the aisle because they are, you know, kids in a toy store.

Anyway, one little boy ran into a guy who was probably about 23-26 years old wearing the typical “I’m an angry loser who wasn’t hugged enough as a kid and now take my bitterness out on the world by acting in a snooty and elite manner” uniform.  Well, the guy looks at the kid and says “watch it, brat!”  The kid was a little freaked, I guess, and turned away real quick to run off (you know, because he’s a kid who just had a strange adult yell at him), and Captain Douchebag yells “there’s no such thing as Santa, you little shit!” and turned to his buddy to exchange their self-satisfied “I’m an angry loser who wasn’t hugged enough as a kid and now take my bitterness out on the world by acting in a snooty and elite manner” looks with one another.

The kids were just staring at the guy, so I stepped between them and Captian Douchebag and his partner, and said something along the lines of “don’t listen to that Grinch.  Why don’t you go find your parents?” and the kids ran off (probably bumped into someone else because they’re, you know, kids) and I turned around and asked those two what the hell their problem was.  I must have intimidated them a bit, because they walked away pretty fast.  I guess people don’t like it when someone bigger than them raises their voice at them, eh?

What would possess someone to yell something like that at a kid?  Is that guy’s life so incomplete that he felt that it was absolutely necessary to try to ruin some little kids’ Christmas for the simple crime of being kids in a crowded store?  I’m glad that I didn’t say anything else to them, and I’m glad that the situation was ended right then and there; but it’s been bugging me for a while since.  This guy got mad because kids were acting like kids…so he decided to act like a baby.

Merry Christmas to all, especially those who don’t feel the need to hurt the feelings of children to make themselves feel better.

Just Like Starting Over….

Great song.

 I grew up a child of the eighties with a father who never really left the 60’s when it came to music.  It is amazing how so many of these things stick with you over time.  I can say with total confidence that it has been at least a decade since I have listened to a Beatles album all the way through (and yes, I am including their solo careers in this statement); but even tho I may not listen to them as much as I did as a younger dude, I still remember each lyric of each song.

 Wonderful memory trigger, music is.  And don’t worry, I may occassionally fall into Yoda-speak, but not often.  The fact stands that music lyrics, once they have touched you, manage to stay with you even when you least expect it.  A couple minutes ago when I was thinking of the first thing to post on this, that John Lennon song wasn’t on my mind at all.  Instead I was thinking of my one previous attempt at this blogging thing many moons ago.  I never kept up with it and like so many flights of fancy it was gone before I barely noticed it was there.

 Still…I liked the title of that old blog, so I decided to use it again.  Consider this the second coming of something that no one ever noticed the first time around!

 Enough about that, tho.  Now I have this John Lennon song on my mind.  This one and others.  Songs that I haven’t thought about in ages, but are now flying through my mind in a bizarre cacaphony of melody and memory.  Suddenly I am not sitting in front of the cold light of my laptop, but instead I am sitting in my bedroom directly upstairs from my parent’s room.  It is late, and I have to get up early for practice in the morning…but I can’t sleep.  I’m sitting up with a stack of comics listening to the soundtrack for “Imagine: John Lennon.”  In a time without cell phones or email, I’m alone with no one except my dreams and imagination to keep me company over the long night.  I have a towel along the bottom of my door in case my Mother wakes up, she won’t see my light on.

This is my world – my sanctuary.  By the time I was 16 I had already buried one of my closest friends, and I was convinced that I alone in this vast world understood what loss and pain meant.  I only hope that the people then did not see the fool that I was that I see so clearly now.  It is so funny that when we are younger we have everything so figured out, save for that one thing…our inability to realize just how incredibly dumb we were.  Half of the reason why I am building a time machine is so I can go back and beat the stupid out of my younger self.

Wait – did I say “time machine?”  I meant “swamp gas.”

Anyway – while I plot and scheme to break the laws of time and space so that I can go back in time and teach myself a lesson I won’t ever forget, you can all do something else.  What that is, I neither know, nor care.  I have complete faith in all of you to get past this difficult stage of our relationship.