What really ticks you off?

Thank God it's six o'clock and the pressure's off. You've walked out of your place of employment and you are free! Yah that's great but you're still ticked off! Or you are still feeling very uptight! Your eyes narrow as you remember that smarmy fellow employee who stabbed you in the back when he told your boss you had alcohol on your breath after yesterdays lunch and then that puke lunchroom drone, who can barely speak English, who hassled you because you didn't recycle your lunch waste into the proper "green" containers and then that fat doughboy security guard who said "excuse me sir but you should have parked in the "L" row and not the "K" row as you know you are supposed to; am I not correct mein herr?"

Man all you want to do is kick somebody's rear end, right? Or go to some bar and get hammered. But then you end up sitting next to that butthead who's yelling at the top of his lungs like he's some kind of real estate heavyweight and he wants everyone in the bar to know about the big deal he just closed. Then there's the bartender who won't change the channel from the Canadian National Curling Championships to the seventh game of the World Series. "We've got a lot of bacon-head customers dude". No problem dude, don't look at this change on the counter like I'm going to leave it when I'm out of here in thirty seconds.

And then you reach Lake Washington Boulevard for a nice relaxing drive home and you come up behind three chatterboxes blocking the road as they pedal their three thousand dollar Fuji bicycles at less than fifteen miles an hour. You shake your head at their color coordinated red and green shirts and shorts with enough advertising printed on them to rival a European Soccer Jersey. You can tell these Lance Armstrong wanna-bees are really hot bikers and are working up a heavy sweat as they pedal side by side with their heads jerking back and forth like a flock of chickens in a barnyard.

Then you look in your rearview mirror and there's a guy so close to your back bumper you can read the Obama label on his ball cap. You can see the sap trying to change channels on his stereo as he's juggling his cell phone with his Starbucks "double tall Americano" latte. A long time ago I learned when this happens you do not speed up because the wretch will just match your increase in speed, dogging you along the boulevard like Richard Petty in the last lap at Daytona. I don't know if it's a vision thing; as in the goofball needs a new pair of glasses and can't see the car in front of him until my bumper comes into focus or if it's territory issue, as in "you're in my space dude and I want it" or "I'm in a hurry to get home thirty seconds sooner than if I just sat back and enjoyed the drive" or maybe he's starting to taste that first cocktail and some sort of withdrawal has already started to settle in. Anyway the only way to make these morons back off is for them to suddenly see the red lights of your back jukebox. When those surprising reds pop on usually reality will set in and the piggybacking push-punk will back off. If he doesn't it's his "bad". He connects with your back bumper and it's on him, as in: "he was FOLLOWING TOO CLOSE Officer, he was dogging me when that flying squirrel landed directly in front of me; I barely stopped in time!"

And then you get home, get out of the car and the rabid mutt across the street is barking at an elderly couple who are tottering down the sidewalk minding their own business. And the thing that really ticks you off is that the dog's owner is standing in his front yard behind his white picket fence that is getting ready to fall down and watering his shriveled sorry excuse for a garden. The couple stop and attempt to befriend the extremely annoying animal who shoves his mangy muzzle between the fence slats and increases the rate of his barking. I can hear the mutt's owner talking to his obviously retarded rover probably saying: "I think it's OK to back off Fido I don't think these 80 year old folks who've lived in the neighborhood for 60 years present much of a security problem, would you lower your voice".

Don't get me started on dogs who dump in my front yard, run unleashed in City parks, sneak toward my left ankle with their teeth bared as I run down the sidewalk or their owners who don't get the part about "Yes all the City dog ordinances apply to your dog too" or who sneak their dog poop bags into my recycling container. Couldn't they at least put it in the garbage? I've been staying up late working on my new invention: a garbage can with mega speakers that yells BOO! when opened by someone with unauthorized finger prints.


There that felt better. Give it a try. If you get home and there's nobody to listen as you unwind from your day just start a blog and unload to someone at the other end. Somewhere there will be a sympathetic ear but the deal is that you have to share their day too. Then we're all a lot happier. What ticks you off?