Category: why

My Magnetic Personality

For years I have told friends that I am a “freak magnet,” and for years, I’ve had them tell me, “Oh, don’t be silly! Everyone says that.”

Then we go out to a bar or a dance club or a restaurant and sure enough, the wackiest person in the room will find their way to me like a moth to a flame.

I don’t head out to the bars and clubs much anymore, so I think I’ve grown a little soft in my ability to head off the loo-loos who inevitably end up sitting next to me.

Wednesday this week, I got invited to a “customer appreciation event” associated with my job.

Well, ok. Appreciate me!

It was a HUGE event with piles of free food, an endless flow of free booze and lots and lots of live musical entertainment.

While I had a gosh dang good time, I was always aware of the fact that I was having a gosh dang good time along with my boss and several coworkers.

I had a few glasses of wine then switched to water about two hours before my anticipated departure time.

At the end of the evening my boss, coworkers and I parted ways at the shuttle busses. The various busses were on different routes to take people back to their hotels and parking in different parts of the city.

Sadly, my route was the most popular, so I stood in a very long line for about forty-five minutes. People were yelling at each other for cutting in line, being snotty and aggressive, and generally at the end of their tether.

I practiced my meditation and art of being calm while I waited my way to the front of the line. Finally I got on a bus and found a seat.

And here’s where my magnetic personality comes in.

The drunkest, largest male human I may have ever encountered stumbled his way onto the shuttle, looked over his seating opportunities, and flung himself into the seat next to me.

Then passed out.

Hey, fine. I’m down with that. It will make for a quiet ride.

Oh nooo. That would be too easy.

As the bus jerked to a start, The Mountain next to me woke up and began making those burping, choking sounds.

“Dude,” I said, forcefully, “are you going to throw up?”

He looked at me somberly and nodded.

“THEN GET OFF THE BUS!” I hollered.

Well. He was at that stage of drunk where all your bones have gone gelatinous, and was unable to stand. Or move. Or do much of anything other than….

Begin vomiting.

He at least had the grace to vomit toward the aisle and not on me.

However…this is where I lost my mind.

I’d been up for a 7am meeting, working hard all day, celebrating heavily all night, and at 1:00 in the morning, wedged in at the window seat next to a vomit breathing dragon, I’d lost my sense of humor.

“Somebody help me! This guy is throwing up!” I yelled to my fellow travelers.

I heard someone go “Ew.” But that was all.

So I tried again, “Help me! Please! This guy needs to get off the bus! He’s throwing up all over the place!”

The bus driver walked down the aisle, saw the guy throwing up, make a “yuck” face and turned around and went back to the front of the bus.

“Are you serious?!? You aren’t going to help me!?!” I yelled at his retreating back.

I was ignored.

So I ratcheted up my freak out and began yelling with renewed energy.

Finally, the guy who appeared to be the friend of Captain Puke came over and in the most condescending way possible asked, “Are you ok?”

“NO!” I replied.

“Do you want out of that seat?”

“YES!” I replied.

So he grabbed my arm and tugged and I pushed off with my legs and we sort of drag vaulted me over the top of the now passed out guy.

An incredible gentleman in the back of the bus stood up and told me that back home in Chicago he commutes to work every day on a bus, and was used to standing. He gave up his seat for me. I thanked him profusely.

When we finally arrived at our destination, as we exited the chartered shuttle bus, we all filed past Barf Boy. He was still passed out in the seat, vomit all down his front.

His friend…the guy that told me what a “good guy” his friend was as he dragged me out of the seat?

He left the unconscious man on the bus.

Fabulous.

What a talent I have, attracting the elite of the world to sit next to me.

That Ain’t Right

Today I have a follow up to last week’s The Great Dr. Pepper Incident.

A reader suggested to me that since the cost of that taste-tested Dr. Pepper was free, and since free is good, didn’t all the no-cost make that nasty Dr. Pepper taste better?

And heck, my readers are brilliant, so of course I considered this to be a good point.

Then I decided to embark upon an experiment.

I would try other sodas in the for-free cooler and see how they fared in the “tastes better cuz it’s free” hypothesis.

First up in my research was a Mountain Dew.

I decanted the Dew into a cup thoughtfully provided by my employers.

Now. Um. That’s not a nice color.

That looks a lot like the last time I tried taking a multi-vitamin supplement. My pee turned that color. WHY IN THE HELL would I want to ingest something the color of vitamin-tainted pee?

That said, I forged ahead. I was able to get through a good deal of the Dew before I gacked out and had to pour it down the nearest drain.

Twenty minutes later, I remembered why, besides color, I don’t drink frapping Mountain Dew.

The caffeine.

I had heart palpitations the rest of the day.

Yeah. Free. So not worth it.

Not one to be easily dissuaded…

…Or, as my father used to say, not smart enough to come in out of the rain…

The next day I plunged back into the challenge.

This time, I made sure I took on something caffeine free.

After checking the entire line of Pepsi products in the cooler, that left only Orange Crush.

Also, I’m going to have to say, that’s not a color I’d generally like my food to be. Not even the orangest of foods, say carrots or pumpkin is that shade of neon orange.

It haunts me.

The taste was even worse. I couldn’t get more than two sips through the Crush before it went right down the drain.

Experiment terminated. The lab rat can’t take it any more.

Conclusion: Free doesn’t actually make a crappy beverage taste better.

Sacrifice, all for the good of science.

Now I must go drink three gallons of water to get all that artificial color out of my liver.

Gah!

The Great Dr. Pepper Incident

One of the perks of my new gig is that they make a large selection of soft drinks available for free to employees.

Now, this would be nice, except….

Several years ago, I gave up all soft drinks, both regular and diet.

They’re just not good fer the ol’ rig, ya know? Bad stuff, lots of chemicals, extra calories and such.

So except for a splash of ginger ale now and again to float a shot of Maker’s Mark, I don’t drink sodas.

But I have to say, free is pretty tempting, right?

I noted in the cooler, there were some chilled to perfection Dr. Peppers looking at me like the last puppy in the pet store.

When I was a kid, I adored Dr. Pepper. To me, it was nectar of the gods.

So yesterday, day two of the new job, I decided to cave and have myself a free Dr. Pepper.

Well.

Yuck.

I mean, p’tooie, bleah, barf, YUCK!

I took two sips and poured the rest out.

It didn’t taste good. I’m sure some of that is due to the fact I just don’t drink sodas anymore.

But you know what? I think A LOT of my reaction was that stuff from my childhood just doesn’t taste the same or even good anymore.

Over this past weekend, I tried a Little Debbie Star Crunch.

That also tasted not at all like I’d wanted it to.

You know what I blame?

Corn syrup.

Ok, this isn’t going to be a rant about corn syrup and how bad it is for you. It could be, but it isn’t.

I’m just going to say this. Good ol’ fashioned delicious cane sugar and corn syrup are NOT the same thing. The taste, the texture, the consistency, NOT THE SAME.

I blame corn syrup, which is in EVERYTHING these days, for the fact that none of the foods and beverages that I so loved in my youth taste like they should.

One could argue that as I have aged, my taste buds have changed, and there is some validity to that.

But that doesn’t let pesky corn syrup off the hook.

Nope.

Then, just to add insult to injury, after I took two drinks of a Dr. Pepper and threw it out, I had heartburn for the rest of the day.

It just ain’t right.

That Pesky Spell Check

I was rereading a few of my text messages the other day on my iPhone. I was looking for a bit of information a friend had given me, so I had the chance to read what I’d written.

I was a little bit embarrassed. Oh the violations of Funk and Wagnalls I’ve committed and sent out to the universe.

Since I have a full keyboard to use for texting, I tend to shy away from the internet approved shortened word uses. It’s a point of pride to write in full sentence form.

I don’t know why, it just is.

However…that very aggressive auto correct on the phone does tend to trip me up.

That got me to thinking about how much I rely on spell check and auto correct these days, which is bad. Spell check isn’t perfect. A 100% spell checked document could still have mistakes.

Gah!

There are a LOT of words that when spelled wrong, are actually still a word. But ya still look kinda silly using the wrong word.

Also, plenty of times, spell check suggests the wrong word entirely.

I see these misused but correctly spelled quite a bit online, in email and of course, on places like Facebook and Twitter.

You can find a few examples here:

10 Common Errors “Spell Check” Won’t Catch

(I’ll ignore the blatant use of unnecessary quotes in that headline)

Yeah, I’ve either seen or made (or both) all of the errors in the article.

There’s a few that get me that aren’t on that list…like:

Rein, meaning how you steer a horse and;

Reign, meaning how you rule a kingdom.

Right, as in I get to have it, and;

Rite, as in I get to dance under the moon about it.

Also troublsome…

To, too and two. I tend to put too many o’s in there at the wrong time. It’s hard to tell the two apart.

And one that makes me bonkers is lose and loose. I see a LOT of posts on support boards about “if I could only loose ten pounds.” It’s a pet peeve.

The article lists through versus threw. However…that’s not where my language and typing skills break down. Nope, I struggle with

Through, as in, I’m past it and;

Thorough, as in I did a complete job.

I even struggled typing that sentence. Gah!

I’ve noticed lately that even publishing houses, once the very model of correct spelling and grammar, are also slacking off in this department. The last four books I’ve read, all recent publications, have had typos, as many as six in one case.

And internet news articles! Ugh!

It seems no one is watching the chicken coop any more on spelling and grammar. Despite trying really hard not to slip, even I’m guilty as charged.

I fret that as our language continues to evolve, misspelling and bad grammar will become appropriate. English teachers of the world, unite!

Word of the day: Obdurate

ob·du·rate   [ob-doo-rit, -dyoo-] –adjective

1. unmoved by persuasion, pity, or tender feelings; stubborn; unyielding.
2. stubbornly resistant to moral influence; persistently impenitent: an obdurate sinner.

Ah obdurate. How I embody you so.

This word crossed my path again yesterday while watching an episode of Jeeves & Wooster, a fun British show that dates back to the early 90’s. The PG Wodehouse books date back much farther than that, some written in the early 1900’s and now in public domain (thus all loaded up on my Kindle!).

The Good Man introduced me to Jeeves & Wooster and I’m now hopelessly in love.

I love language and words, and Wodehouse certainly had a way with the Queen’s English.

So I sort of chuckled this morning when I turned to my blog idea generator, and this was the suggestion:

“When other people tell me what to do….”

Answer: I become obdurate.

I’m not proud of it. It’s just in my nature.

As the third of three kids born to a very smart and very in control family, I was “the baby” and thus everyone just, you know, told me what to do.

This certainly got me past many a hazard in my infancy, but there came a time, I don’t know what age, when damnit, I was tired of being told what to do!

So much so, that being told what to do made me act out.

It’s a trait that’s carried through to adulthood. In fact, it only became more deeply entrenched an increased in velocity.

One would think that this would make me a very bad employee. Actually, when it comes to managers I like and respect, I have no trouble being told what to do in the workplace.

No, Madame Obdurate is more of a home life kind of gal.

Which makes friends, family and loved ones *ever* so happy.

I find my tendency to dig in when someone tells me what to do really isn’t all that unique. It’s pretty much a go-to for most of us.

Because we’re all special little snowflakes, we want to do things our own damn way and I don’t care what you say and pa-tooey!

Yeah.

As I often say to my friends, you don’t have to be free of your emotional baggage, you just have to be self-aware about it.

See how I reel ’em in? Look at that face? Would she harm a fly? No, I don’t think so. But tell her what to do and WHAMMO! Obdurate all up in your grille!