People We All Hate: That One Guy On His Cell Phone

Before you send the gender-roles police after me, let me clarify that this “one guy” can also be a woman. In fact, it usually is. But for the time being, please allow That One Guy to personify whichever annoying person is currently standing next to you yapping away on their cell phone. It never fails: whether you are standing in line at the grocery store or thumbing through racks of clothes at the mall or eating at the Pizza Shack with your friends, there is

“Can you believe we drank all that vodka??? I’m not sure if we slept with John or his cousin!”

always ONE PERSON who will not get off their phone and shut up. That One Guy can be male or female, black white or blue. They can have a crappy pre-paid phone they bought with food stamps or a bluetooth that costs more than your apartment. But they are always talking loud enough for you and the rest of the room to hear them, no matter how far into your ears you stuff your headphones, and they are ALWAYS talking about the cops or about something that should probably make you call the cops. That One Guy doesn’t care if you are listening. That One Guy wants you to listen. 

“This is the fourth time Becky’s had me arrested. She’s got to stop calling the police every time I break a glass bottle on her head.”

That One Guy on his bluetooth needs you to know how truly sorry he is for having misread Janice’s email and missing his 8 o’clock appointment. He wants to assure you that he is perfectly fine with moving 8 AM Monday to 11 AM Wednesday because the first meeting conflicted with his early morning massage anyway. He wants to remind you that his nonfat soy mocha latte needs extra foam and to make sure Starbucks knows because they never listen the first time.

That One Guy on that shiny new iPhone in the neon waterproof case wants to make sure you know just how much she hates this crappy little podunk town and can’t wait to get to get back to New York away from all the idiots. Oh, and by the way,  make sure to save her some of that great weed you bought.

“Baby, of course we’re not doing anything wrong. Nancy and I are only married on paper.”

That One Guy on her razor phone even though razor phones were last season two years ago wants to make it perfectly clear to you and the whole town that her ten-year-old will not talk back to her. She’ll march right out of this store and bust his skinny little butt. That little shit doesn’t know who he’s messing with!

That One Guy on that cheap ass cell phone your tax dollars paid for knows you will be touched by her unwavering devotion to the father of her most recent kid because it is deeply moving that even though he refuses to pay child support, her forgiving nature just cannot let him sit in jail for those sexual molestation charges when he should be at home with their young daughter (like that makes ANY sense at all).

“Jim and I haven’t had sex in six months! There’s no way he caught it from me!”

That One Guy, who we all hate, is almost as omnipresent as God. He is everywhere, immortal and unchanging. Like Peter Pan, That One Guy refuses to grow up, trapped forever in a junior high school world where he must always be the topic of conversation. “LOOK AT ME!” That One Guy is saying. “I’M IMPORTANT, DAMMIT! LISTEN TO ME!”

 Unfortunately, we have no choice.

People We All Hate And Why: The Idiot Behind the Wheel

Conventional wisdom, otherwise known as stereotyping, tells us that women are worse drivers than men and that old people can’t be trusted behind the wheel of a car. Although I am sure there are many women and elderly people who cannot drive, none of these stereotypes are inherently true. The kind of driver someone is does not depend on their gender or their age. A person’s driving skill is directly related to how much of an asshole they are.

I’m not kidding: our least attractive qualities come across in how we drive. That girl who just ran into you because she was Facebooking on her mobile phone? She’s completely oblivious to the world around her. That guy that sailed through the turn lane just to illegally pass you? He’s an impatient prick who thinks the world revolves around him. The driver that passed you even when you were speeding by twenty miles so he would stop tailgating? Yeah, same thing, plus they’re probably speeding because they’re late to everything.

The person who caused this wreck was a dick.

I’m not saying I’m blameless here; you can often find me taking my half out of the middle, straddling both lanes and having to swerve to keep from hitting cars or mailboxes, especially at night. What this says about me is that 1) I have horrible night vision and can’t see anything because I’m pretty close to legally blind in the dark and 2) I’m a huge weirdo who can’t do anything normally. I can’t stay inside my own lane because I’ve never been good at staying inside the lines. As a kindergartener, my teacher would always tell my to color the picture instead of the walls or the table, and I would always ask, “Why?”  And now I’m supposed to stay in my lane, but why? Obviously, I never get tired of asking asinine questions.

So the next time you feel bad for swearing and honking at the total fucking moron in his shitty van that doesn’t even have friggin’ windows because they’re all busted out, and the little angel on your shoulder in that even though he just illegally passed you from the wrong  lane all so he could take a left turn on red that’s even close to being legal, you probably still shouldn’t flip him off, stifle that sanctimonious motherfucker. The whining little bitch on your shoulder is wrong: that guy did not blatantly break the law out of ignorance. He is not on his way to the hospital where his wife is giving birth to their twins. He is not just a decent guy having a bad day. He is an asshole. Cuss him all you like.