Diffused rage

Spend four and a half hours in a tire shop.  It will help you focus where your real anger lies.

I figured it would be a quick (30min?) in and out so I left my laptop in the van.  As time dragged on I was sure it would be ready and minute now so there was no sense in asking to get into the garage to retrieve the computer…  Four and a half hours later, I’m glad I didn’t have my laptop with me.  I would have missed out on this…

I became the old man of the shop.  I sat there as people came and went.  There was a television and a pot of decent coffee.  Some people sat there for a long time, some people were gone in under thirty minutes.  All of them wanted to talk to me.

At first, it was always about what was on TV.  The morning news was on and they covered the disaster in Haiti.  They brought in a young girl recovering from cancer and raised funds for Wolfson’s Children Hospital.  They talked about the weather and they discussed the latest celebrity news and rumors.  The conversations were mostly bland and generic but pleasant enough.  The Dominican gentleman sitting next to me said Haiti was a tragedy waiting to happen.  He says his family lived in two different houses that fell down three years apart and this was without the help of an earthquake.  He is surprised to see video of anything still standing over there…

Next on the programming menu was the Rachael Ray show.  Isn’t she a cook?  Why was the show all about how to spend thousands of dollars for temporary and superficial beauty tips?  There was a guy sitting across from me who caught me laughing as they kept demonstrating these treatments.  We both decided that we are in the wrong businesses.  Four different treatments at $150 each, three times a week for a month before it works and all I have to do is rub gel and massage the sensitive areas of rich women?  Yeah, I’m not getting paid enough…

After the cook’s non-cooking show was some judge show that was Jerry Springer meets The People’s Court.  Some girl was teased when she was caught stuffing her bra so her mother pulled her out of school and enrolled her in a private school.  The mother is suing the father of the teasing boys for the $8000 tuition…  The old man sitting with me started talking about how sensitivity has been taken too far and we’re all a bunch of wimps.  He said that the kids used to call him names when he was a child and “look how I turned out” as he pointed to his “Veteran” hat and jacket.  He says we need to be sensitive enough to keep from killing each other but getting picked on is good for a kid, “makes them realize they have to fight their own battles in life.”   Eight grand for one instance of name-calling?  This guy may have the right idea about us raising wimpy children…

As I stepped outside to enjoy the last of the cold weather, a small woman was asking for directions to Duval Station Road.  I pointed it out to her and told her the easiest way to get to it from the parking lot, you’d think I just saved her small child from a fire or something…  She was amazed and eternally grateful that I even answered her in the first place…  I guess she’s used to being ignored?  I don’t know…

And there was the woman who was amazed to hear that they could patch/plug a tire.  She’s angry at her husband because this is the longest she’s had a car.  Normally she gets a new one every two years but the economy is bad and all…  She went on and on about the roadside assistance and how her husband didn’t want to take the car on vacation to North Carolina…  She was telling me all kinds of things like she was in therapy or something.  I’m just a stranger here…

They say that Everybody Loves Raymond.  To be honest, I barely know Raymond, I’m not sure if I even like him or not.  Love is a pretty strong word to go throwing around about some guy I don’t even know…  Okay, joking aside, I’ve probably seen a total of six minutes of this show in my life.  The tall one has a low voice, Raymond sounds like Kermit the Frog and the parents are cranky and meddlesome?  That’s about all I know about the show.  In this episode, Raymond and the father are arguing about going to church.  At every point they opened the canned laughter, I wanted to scream.  The laughs were all about how biting and mean they are to one another.  They were petty and sarcastic and we are supposed to laugh at that?

I started paying attention and saw that it was everywhere.  They did a commercial about their meteorologist and they made the point that it was important to know when it’s going to rain.  They illustrated the point by saying, “If it’s going to rain at six, maybe you can squeeze in the kid’s ball game but if it’s raining at four, you have to figure out what you’re going to do with the kids.”  As I type it it doesn’t sound so bad but when it was spoken on the TV, it really sounded like they didn’t want to deal with their children…

The “star” rumors were all about who had the fattest ass on the red carpet.  Their “round table” discussion said some mean and vicious things about the local football coach.  All their news headlines were punctuated by the anchors making snide comments…  I really couldn’t understand why they were on the air.

All those people I talked to in the waiting area were nice.  All the people on the television were crap.  They are marketing hatred toward us.  They want us to hate ourselves and each other.  They want us to keep bickering amongst ourselves so we don’t notice that it’s all artificial.  These racial and class wars we’re still fighting are all in our heads.  That guy sitting next to you on the bus is probably a nice guy.  The media would have you believe he’s a rapist-in-waiting.  That quiet guy in the cubicle down the hall from you is probably someone you’d like.  The television says that he’s “too quiet” and must be the next terrorist.  Bob from marketing isn’t really a homicidal maniac ready to spring upon the next person who utters the word “spork”.  He’s probably a swell guy.  People aren’t as bad as the television says they are.  People are actually pretty cool.  Every once once a while you meet someone that either had a bad day or is genuinely an asshole, but for the most part, the general public is alright.

Buck the system and tell the media to go fuck themselves.  Take a chance and say “good morning” to random people.

Hey, if they do turn out to be homicidal murderers, you can only get it wrong once…