If … I … Were King … of the Forrrrresssstttt
The wise and venerable Monkey has issued some extraordinarily sensible decrees, which I will summarize thusly: take your asses home, people. I concur. More generally, she posed the question of what things we would outlaw if we could and also gave us enforcement power over those bans, although she didn’t specify which punishments we could dole out. The punishments are the part I would enjoy most, so I shan’t be omitting those. Yes, I said “shan’t.” If you don’t like it, make your own list and put “shan’t” on it. It won’t hurt my feelings.
Things You Cannot Do, According to Me, and the Consequences of Disregarding This List, Also According to Me
1. Use a leaf blower.
What is the point of this apparatus? It is deafeningly loud, it smells like an explosion is imminent, and all it does is move stuff from one location to another location for no useful reason. Use a rake, for God’s sake. Or a broom. Or just leave the grass clippings and leaves where they are because you are not improving matters at all by just blowing them four feet to the left of where they started out.
Punishment: Watch videos of melting Arctic sea ice and polar bears stranded on floes until you cry like a little punk.
2. Fail to yield any portion of the sidewalk to people who are walking toward you on that same sidewalk.
Let’s say there’s room for three people to walk side-by-side on the sidewalk. You and your two rude friends are walking side-by-side on the sidewalk. If I’m walking up behind you and want to pass, then I give you the benefit of the doubt regarding whether you know I’m there and simply walk around you. However, if I’m walking toward you, and none of you is either tapping a cane or being led by a German Shepherd wearing a little red vest, then at least one of you is going to have to move your ass over either in front of or behind your two rude friends. If I’m walking with someone, we’ll even go single file and let you, Rudy and the Rudettes, have two-thirds of the sidewalk. Aside from that, if any portion of your person drifts over into the 1/3 of the sidewalk that I have deemed to be mine, you are in violation.
Punishment: Amputation.
3. Spit in public.
Hey, they’ve invented this nifty new thing. It’s called swallowing.
Punishment: I get to put used gum in your hair.
4. Sing along with your iPod.
You can’t sing. You think you can sing, but you are incorrect. Also, your taste in music is why God created earbuds. When you put the two things together, the result is you, on a bus, torturing people with an off-key account of your lovely lady lumps. In related matters, you look ridiculous when you bob your head like that.
Punishment: Yeaaahaaa. Doot doo dew!
5. Ask me what I had for dinner.
I know that there’s nothing inherently wrong with asking someone what they had for dinner; however, my senior year of high school, I dated a boy who I’ll call Tony because that’s his name, and he used to call me up every night and say, “whadja have for dinner?” Every single night. Monday night: “whadja have for dinner?” Tuesday night: “whadja have for dinner?” Wednesday night: “whadja have for dinner?” I would continue, but I think you see the pattern. What’s worse is that when I’d tell him what I’d had for dinner he would then say, “mmmmmmm. What else did you have?” “Steak.” “Mmmmmmm. What else did you have?” “Chicken.” “Mmmmmmm. What else did you have?” “Spaghetti.” “Mmmmmmm. What else did you have?” Again, the pattern, you can see it. Aside from being brainless, the other annoying thing about it involved the fact that his mom spent half her day cooking dinner and would rarely repeat a recipe, whereas my mom worked during the day and would come home and make one of the six things that she knew how to cook. Thus, often the conversation would go:
“Whadja have for dinner?”
“Spaghetti.”
“Mmmmmmm. What else did … Didn’t you have spaghetti last week?”
“I want to break up with you so much.”
Sometimes I would make things up, just to avoid having him consult his notes and then ask me why I’d had pork chops twice in one week. And later when I hated him more, I would tell him, “hamburger,” every night, regardless of what I’d actually eaten.
Nowadays, if people ask me what I had for dinner, I might answer the question in a normal fashion, or I might become enraged. It’s unpredictable. Therefore, I think it’s best if I simply disallow the asking.
Punishment: None. Or death. It’s unpredictable.
Ths was awesome. #’s 1 & 2 are two of my hugest pet peeves. For #1,especially if the leaf blower is used on a weekend morning before, say 9 AM, i say ship that person to the melting ice floe.
Preferably a floe upon which a hungry polar bear is waiting.
My former boss came in one Monday upset because he had been intermittently running a wood chipper in his yard all weekend, and his neighbor came over and asked him when he thought he might be finished. His response was something like, “I’ll be finished when I’m finished!” There was a big argument, culminating in his neighbor telling him he was an inconsiderate jerk. He was looking for sympathy, which we gave him because he was our boss, but privately we were like, “yeah. No, you’re a jerk.”
AMEN! All of those are perfect!!
I want to amend the spitting one a bit because this morning in the park, I saw a dog lick a woman’s face and she must have had her mouth open at the time because her response was to grimace and wipe her face repeatedly and try to spit a little, while her boyfriend stood there and laughed at her. So I don’t want to put gum in her hair, but she might want to put gum in her boyfriend’s hair.
I’m with you on these, especially #1. My next door neighbor is a pet store, and they have a landscaping service come by twice a week. Three guys, one with a leaf blower, one with a weed whacker, and one with a lawn mower. All three are on at the same time, always on weekdays, and ALWAYS BEFORE 8 AM. (ferfuck’ssake)
I’d love to figure out a way to make them cry like little punks.
My three immediate neighbors to the north all use gardeners, and about once a month their schedules coincide and about six pieces of machinery are running simultaneously. Their idea of cleaning up the yard waste is to pull out the leaf blower and blow the grass onto the neighboring property or into the street so it can clog up the storm drains. Creeps.
If you were king of the forest, I think you could commandeer the wicked witch’s flying monkey to help you dole out punishment.
I suggest the sidewalk hogs be torn limb from limb by flying monkeys, but you are king of the forest so I wouldn’t deign to tell you how to mete out punishment.
It’s not widely known, but the flying monkeys are actually quite mild-mannered and zen about such things. They’ve been terribly misunderstood.
If you’re already home, do you just get to stay there? As in, do I have to actually get up and go to work tomorrow, or can I just stay home?
Also, I will cheerfully wield the chainsaw for amputating the sidewalk-hoggers.
It depends on how you feel about the people at your office and how annoying and/or sick you plan on being. As for the sidewalk hoggers, I don’t think a chainsaw will be slow enough to get the message across. I’d prefer you use a butter knife.
I’m just going to repeat what I wrote on Monkey’s post and say that if you two were in charge of all the rules of the world, that would be A-OK with me. Except that I sort of think not saying “A-OK” might be another rule you are thinking about but just didn’t include. I promise I’m not a repeat offender on that one.
Also, sometimes I think I missed out on something by not having any “official” boyfriends in high school. Then I read stories like yours and I realize I really wasn’t missing much.
No one who hasn’t dated most anyone I’ve dated is missing much. That was grammatically awkward, but the sentiment is fairly sound. In unrelated news, I seem to have developed a fondness for the expression, “okey dokey,” so I can’t cast aspersions on “A-OK.”
So, what DID you have for dinner? Heh.
I guess I don’t have anyone who asks me that regularly, so I don’t mind.
Oh, well, now you’ve done it. Hold on. … Nope, this is one of those times when I don’t become enraged. Although now that you mention it, I had fusilli last night, but only a few days ago, I had rotelli, which is almost the same thing. I’m sure Tony would have a lot to say about that.
Just experienced this pet peeve again: When people feel the need to tell you that their email address starts with a lower case letter. Email addresses are NOT CASE SENSITIVE.
Ha. Please pass along my congratulations to that person for his first day on the internet.
Your high school boyfriend sounds a lot like my first boyfriend who i will call Dave, because that’s his name.
I’m sure the conversations had their own unique flair and everything, but I remember spending hours on the phone blathering on about absolutely nothing of substance.
In fact, probably a few of those hours were spent talking about what we had for dinner.
God, i’m glad those years are over… I’m getting nauseous just remembering them.
Well, but “flair” suggests that something interesting might accidentally have been said. The other thing Tony liked to talk about was how much we had in common, and even though the only commonality he could think of was that we were both Leos, he seemed to think that was significant. He was so dull that I used to look forward to the date being over so I could go home and do my calculus homework.
I especially enjoyed number 2, as it is one of my very own pet peeves, especially living in the city. The sidewalks are only so big, people! MAKE ROOM.
It’s particularly annoying when they give you The Look as they fail to move over, the one that says, “you deserve to have to walk in the gutter for daring to walk on the sidewalk when I am already using it.”
Leaf blowers exist only to make your leaves someone else’s problem. I HATE them.
So…what did you have for BREAKFAST? See how I circumvented the letter, if not the spirit of your law?
I have the same thing for breakfast every morning. I will send you a dollar if you can guess what it is. (It’s not hamburger.)
I would add the usage of a hose/water to clean one’s driveway (instead of a broom)… I’ll let you come up with a punishment.
Re. #2 if you were to say ‘excuse me’ would they move? That is when my 20 years of martial arts and learning how to use my elbows as weapons are usufull! ;-)
…and what’s the deal with Danny again?! Come on!
First, thank you for mentioning Danny. I hope you watched the whole thing as it’s really the very last part that’s the most horrifying. And yet, he still has not been voted off. This is why some people in other countries hate America.
My problem with saying “excuse me” is that it suggests that I should be excused for walking on a public sidewalk, so I don’t say it unless I’ve inadvertently been the rude jerk in the transaction. I sometimes harbor the fantasy, however, that at the precise moment I have to step over to the grass or into the street to avoid having someone plow into me, I scream, “MOVE OVER!!!” directly into the person’s ear.
My next door neighbor used his leaf blower to blow snow off of his wife’s car and the bushes in his front yard a few months ago. Thankfully we only received one day of snow so that was a one time offense. We only received a couple of inches and since we’re in Atlanta, it was melted within a few hours so I’m not really sure why he felt the need to blow it off anyway.
Hot Brazilian asks me what I ate for dinner on a fairly regular basis. For whatever reason, it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s because he loves food and enjoys talking about it.
If I ruled the world I would punish people who think they have to touch you when they are talking to you. The punishment would be to chop off their hand.
Oh, I hate the touchers! I don’t mind a light hand on my forearm or back BRIEFLY, but the ones who massage your shoulders? They should go to prison. My neighbor reached across the fence and squeezed my shoulder a couple of times on Sunday, so I’ve decided that one of us has to move.
Leaf blowers! Argh! Sidewalk-spitters – KaBOOOM their asses away from civilization! I once saw a friend inadvertently step in a pile of spit/phlegm, then get in my car. I’m now obsessed with spit on peoples’ shoes ending up on my floors and carpets at home. And that really grosses me out. Big time.
I have a shoes-off rule in my house, but it’s hard to enforce with repair people and such. One time the electrician came in through the kitchen door and then proceeded to wipe his feet on the area rug as if it were a welcome mat. I am tempted to go on Yelp and give him a mediocre rating for that.
Ditto on the singing. I’m pretty sure American Idol doesn’t do castings on buses and, if it did, you and your lady lumps would be kicked the eff off!
Punishment: Being trapped on a Titanic rescue boat with William Hung and Celine Dion.
Please add to your list the woman who sat next to me in ‘Wolverine’ and managed to both exhale out her apparently snotty nose and making wet sucking noises while inhaling noodles. In a movie theater.
Punishment: Being trapped to a chair while eating blended bull testicles and watching a reel of Britney/Lindsey crotch shots.
This kind of thing is why I always wait for the DVD. Although … I do have to admit I am louder than average when eating any type of noodle soup, but it’s a cultural thing (not slurping your noodles is considered rude) and besides it’s not like I eat a big bowl of ramen in church or at the opera. Also, I think I adjust the noise level downwards when I’m with non-slurpers, but I’m not sure. Maybe all my friends have discussed this amongst themselves.
#1 – I agree
#2 – I have this problem at work, even in wide hallways. Do people really need to walk six abreast?
#3 – I agree
#4 – If the singer dresses as bad as s/he sings, it’s not offensive, it’s an amusing anecdote.
%5 – I dated someone who would call me up and recite the minutiae of his day and I LOVED it because I had just left a silent marriage partner. ANY talk was better than none. I don’t feel that way anymore, though. Silence is golden! Which reminds me, no eternal hell and damnation for cell phone jerks?
I haven’t had too much trouble with cell phone jerks, apart from the occasional Bluetooth wearing she-devil, but maybe I just don’t notice it. I think when I can only hear one side of a conversation, it’s easier to tune it out. One time, though, there was a girl on the bus having a loud and PROLONGED conversation with her cell service provider about how she’s sure they overcharged her because she couldn’t possibly have talked that much and she knows she went over her minutes but not that much and so they must have overcharged her because she just didn’t talk that much and yap yap yap yap yap … Everyone applauded when she got off the bus, but she didn’t notice because she was still on the phone.
Lately all the service people who come to my house have been putting these funny plastic slippers over their boots. The slippers are like shower caps for footwear. I’m thinking of getting some for my garden shoes.
I’ve seen those, but only in commercials for various service people, and I think my furnace company includes something like, “we wear booties!” in their flyer that explains why it’s okay for them to overcharge me. No one has ever worn them in my house though.
I so agree with all of those. And the gum in the hair punishment should be liberally applied. So if you hear about gum wielding vigilantes in Texas, you’ll know it’s your fault. :)
Officially, I cannot condone vigilantism. Unofficially, I recommend that you use Dubble Bubble Bubble Gum.
I am a gardener so sometimes a leaf blower is a required piece of equipment for me. Having said that, I do not like the way the “mower and blower” gardeners make use them- in public places, shooting leaves and twigs at innocent people, or when they blow the mess from one person’s yard to another.
But there are instances when I find them very useful (for instance, blowing fallen leaves out of shrubs that would be damaged by smacking them with a broom or rake) and I only use them in private gardens during normal business hours, so there is rarely anyone to disturb.
I won’t make you watch any polar bear videos then because the shrub thing makes sense to me, and also I don’t have any actual power.