(Embracing the) Surly Thursdays

I am not a good person. Oh, I'm generally nice and polite to everyone, but this is only because I suffer from an unfortunate surfeit of empathy, and if I was mean or rude to anyone I would just have to experience the tiresome effect of being able to vividly imagine how that made them feel, and it's just not worth the effort. And sure, I adore my family and friends and I would do anything to help them out or make them feel better, within reason, right after The Vampire Diaries, but I'd throw them all over for a guaranteed extra two or three good hair days a month.

But I'm not a good person. When I'm alone and driving around, I'm filled with rage and hatred for all the stupid drivers who don't have the good sense to just get the fuck out of my way. And man, there are a lot of stupid drivers. The ones who won't pull up far enough when they're stopped at a red light to let the right-turning people turn right (see, I always pull up far enough, because otherwise I just have to vicariously experience the vein-throbbing head-explosiveness going on in the car behind me). The ones who gaily swerve from lane to lane because look! A rainbow! A cow! The ones who come to a full and complete stop, which hey, I respect, because I've been doing the full and complete stop ever since this post, BUT then after they've stopped, they don't just go. They inch cautiously forward into the intersection as if some purple-motorcycled freak is going to appear out of nowhere and plow into them. Because yes, I do mean when the intersection is COMPLETELY EMPTY.

I had to pick my Dad up at the hospital after his cataract surgery on Monday. I know this is a tired subject but why, oh why, do they make the place you have to go when you're sick, already ill at ease in the world, and prone to disorientation and confusion, so completely baffling and forbidding? I mean, in this situation there was no dire illness or fear of death, and I STILL came out of it feeling like I'd run a marathon through a forest fire.

Tuesday I went to the mall because Wednesday was Angus's grade 6 leaving ceremony (isn't that a weird thing to call it? I respect that they want to get away from the 'graduating from everything' wave, but it makes me think of those science fiction stories where everybody on the planet has to die at the age of sixty or something. If they started putting wreaths of flowers on their heads I was grabbing my kid and getting the eff out of there) and we realized on Monday that, although he had a number of nice, presentable shirts and a roughly equal number of nice, presentable pairs of of shorts, none of said nice, presentable items looked remotely un-idiotic when put together.

I hate the mall. By the time I left there were (I can hardly type it)..... sweat marks on the back of my shirt.

Wednesday was the leaving ceremony. More on that later.

Last night I was reading the paper. There's a column in our paper written by Craig and Mark Kielberger (I'm not googling anything about this for spelling or accuracy, read with extreme skepticism), who have been activists for world peace and justice and clean water in Africa and stuff like that since the age of three or something. For all my snark, we must all agree that these are good, good people. So people write in and ask them stuff about activism and social causes. The letter I read last night was asking if edgy campaigns such as the "I love boobies" bracelets (one of which my son got for his birthday - not from me - and wears proudly_ and the "fuck cancer" t-shirts are effective, or if they put people off. Craig and Mark talked a little bit, in a fairly measured way, about the woman who started the fuck cancer t-shirt campaign. But at the end of their column they said they thought 'messages of hope and inspiration' were the best way to go for social causes.

And now I want to bitch-slap Craig and Mark Kielberger.

Not a good person.