Those Mayans better be right - Two more years is my limit

On the surface, it sounds like I lead an nice, peaceful, perhaps even care-free existence. I don't have to go to work, I take long afternoon naps, I have a steady supply of hard-core pain medication, and I get to spend most of my free-time with my daughter. My daughter who manages to simultaneously be both my best friend and my proudest contribution to this world. So why is it then, that I spend most of my day gnashing my teeth in blind rage? Why am I constantly choking back an urge to head for the nearest premature baby ward, and embark on a cranial soft spot punching spree? The answer is simple:- People. Stinking, ignorant, vile, putrid people who surround me from every direction. A plague of abhorrent, jackanapes who make me want to reach for a pillow and smother myself. All because I am loathe to even breathe the same air as them.

Today the cross-hair on my keyboard is set on two particular demographics: Bad parents and lazy dog-owners. They are, without question, amongst the worst of the scrapings from the bum-crack of humanity. It is in no small part thanks to them and one horrifically shitty day, that I am now one step closer to becoming an angry old man with a blood pressure problem. Let's re-visit the days events a little more closely now shall we?

A Rather Snowy School Run

There's something that happens to a motorist when they make the journey to pick up their child from school. They lose a large percentage of brain function. Some rational part of their mind shuts down, goes offline and then implodes. Nothing evidences this more profoundly than the disastrous gridlock that occurs outside every primary school come home time. People double park, they box each other in, they mount kerbs, I have no doubt that if they could, they would drive into their child's classroom, all in a desperate bid to avoid several yards walk. By far the most grim part of the whole affair is that most of them live just round the fucking corner from the school! It's bad enough that they band together to completely obstruct traffic in the name of laziness, but to do so when they are within spitting distance of their own home is heinous in the extreme.

Thankfully, as one of the very few perks of being a gimped-up cripple, I don't have to deal with the torturous affair that is finding a parking spot during the school run. Back at the beginning of the term, I was very kindly granted permission to use the (normally) completely out of bounds staff car park (Unbelievably, to the spiteful envy of many other parents who perhaps feel that constant pain is a fair trade-off for some parking privileges!). It is here, within this car park, that the scene is set for out woeful tale.

This morning, as my daughter and I ventured out to the car for the school run, we were greeted by a very light snowfall, lazily making it's way down to the ground. It was clear to see that it had only just started, as a very light dusting of white covered everything in sight. If I were, in hindsight, to be pressed for an educated guess at the depth of this snow cover, it would be something in the region of one eighth of a centimetre. In simple terms; 'absolutely fuck all'. We made our way out to the car, completely unfazed by the banal blizzard's failure to make an impact.

Not far from our little cul de sac, we were quickly faced with our first clue as to what kind of morning this was about to become; fifteen minutes of driving had seen us make a whopping three turns and travel approximately one fifth of a mile. Thanks to the weather conditions, main road traffic was nose to nose and the roads were at a complete standstill. It completely eludes me why even the slightest sign of snow results in inevitable, vehicular gridlock (I suspect it has something to do with people rushing out to panic-buy carrots and coal for their snow-men.) The worst part of remaining stationary at this point in our journey was that, even though we had barely left, we were now a mere, single right turn away from arriving at our destination. Before you smile at the inherent hypocrisy in taking the car for this short journey, I'd like to gently remind you all firstly that my legs are fucked and secondly, to go jam a fork in your eye! There's nothing quite so infuriating as having to endure being stuck in traffic, a stone's throw from where you're headed. Least of all when your arrival marks the beginning of five sweet hours of child-free, relaxation time.

Ten torturous minutes of creeping along in first gear later, I finally approached the right turn that lead into the school's staff car park. By this point the level of sheer pent-up rage I was carrying around had managed to turn my knuckles white and render my scrotum a shrivelled, angry, mass retracted to my lower abdomen. I was now literally aching for the sweet sanctuary of that small staff car park, where I could turn off and away from the main road's gibbering populace of what I would henceforth come to dub 'snow drivers'. I threw on my indicator and turned, aghast as I laid eyes not on the small, inviting staff car park I had come to know but yet another grizzly scene of motorist chaos. Blocking my way were no less than half a dozen awkwardly placed cars, tightly packed into an area built to provide ample turning space for two, maybe three cars at a push. The morning had plummeted even deeper into the nine circles of hell as it was now my grim pleasure to watch as six cars full of idiots blinked bemusedly at one another, each waiting for the other to politely move aside. It was like sitting in on a world record attempt for The Most Shitty Game Of Chicken Ever. Played Incorrectly. And By Morons.

Eventually, through the skilful use of angry scowling and horn blaring, the parents were able to carefully negotiate their way round each other and finally leave the car park they should never have entered to begin with (for those of you keeping track, by this point I was now almost thirty minutes late for the beginning of the school day). Being lucky enough to secure myself an empty space to the immediate right of the entrance, I watched them leave one by one before driving the final forty feet or so to the School's office entrance. I walked my daughter in, with a hurried apology to the first member of staff I encountered. She put me at ease by explaining that even most of the teaching staff had still yet to arrive. I turned around, and sure enough, a parade of teachers each more pissed off than the last were making their way in, one after another. They too had had been held up in entering the car park thanks to the previously mentioned parents and their reluctance to walk through a barely tangible covering of snow.

I'm now considering putting a few of these up:

Fun In the Play Park - Now With Free Prizes!

Later in the afternoon I returned to collect my daughter from school. The morning's events, while passed, were by no means forgotten. I made a snap decision during the trip back home that a little jaunt to the park for some swing and monkey-bar action would do us both the world of good. Julia would get to play and run herself ragged, meanwhile I could... Well... Do what I always do; Sit back and be useless, only this time on a spectacularly uncomfortable park bench. Result!

After braving the cold for almost an hour we headed back to the car, our short time in the park having been both fun and uneventful (although I did learn the rather painful lesson that I'm no longer the key demographic for see-saw facilities). No sooner had we set off for home when something rather unpleasant caught my attention; A smell so strong and rancid it brought tears to my eyes and caused me to dry heave. I shot an accusatory look in the direction of Julia who seemed to immediately pick up on it's meaning. "It wasn't me!" She declared, all before I could even open my mouth. I wasn't surprised at her denial. Firstly, because she's denied every one of her own acts of flatulence since the age of two, and secondly, because the smell was far too potent. So much so I found myself checking my mirror to ensure my eyebrows were still there, fearing prolonged fetor exposure may have stripped them right off.

Having ruled out bodily gasses as the source of the stink , I reasoned that we simply had to be downwind of some local farm or another. Then the realisation dawned that the smell had only been with us since we entered the car. This left only one more rational explanation.
"Julia. Can you show me the bottom of your feet please?"
She twisted her leg round to bring her sole up for inspection. I nervously tensed every muscle in my flabby body as the little foot slowly swung into view. A spilt second seemed to swell up and last for an eternity. How could she be so bloody stupid and careless? My mind skipped forward to the unpleasant scene that would greet my arrival home: I envisioned myself coercing Julia into wiping as much excess faecal matter as possible onto the grass outside our front door, before eventually setting to work on the rest with some wet paper towels. I made a silent promise do my best to stay calm and not penalise her too harshly. These things do happen after all I conceded. To careless idiots. Then, snapped from my little reverie by something I did not expect, I closely scrutinised each of Julia's little boots, now turned in my direction. They were both immaculate.

On seeing this I nearly created an unpleasant smell of my own. A pair of clean heels were the very last thing that I'd been braced to expect. This of course, changed the dynamic of the situation completely. If not for the fact I was driving, I would have closed my eyes tightly as I craned my head downwards. Sure enough I looked down to find a large, brown protuberance swinging merrily from the side of my boot. Even worse was the part that was no longer attached to my shoe; Now smeared mercilessly over my brake pedal. Not a good day, I mused on reflection, to wear my brown leather boots with the large, chunky grips on the sole. This marked the first time I'd stepped in a dog turd in my entire adult life. I hope it's the last. There can only be a small handful of activities more gag-inducing than having to scrape masses of poop from each individual groove in a shoe, using only a few squares of kitchen roll and bare hands. Once the majority of shit had been tediously scraped from each groove and crevice, I turned my shoe upside down and doused it with a kettle of boiling water. In spite of all this I've still had to leave it outside my back door overnight. Possibly forever.

I had, at one point, been perfectly willing to blame the chaos caused by of our smelly, little, mahogany hitch-hiker on my Daughter's carelessness. Now that the poo was on the other foot however, I quickly became motivated to place my blame somewhere else: Squarely upon the lazy dog owning public and their dumb, slobbering leg-humping companions (also the pets they own too). I never have been much a dog-lover. It escapes me why anyone would be (to me at least) stupid enough to give a home to one. Dog's are dumb, smelly, needy creatures which could, at any moment snap into a feral rage before tearing your throat out and using your face for a chew toy. Call me prudent or indeed old-fashioned, but the idea of a house-pet capable of killing me stone dead within seconds, is not one that appeals.

The only thing that I hate more than dogs themselves are the people who own them. More specifically, (this morning's events notwithstanding) I hate the owners who seem to think that picking up their pet's curly ass bagels is a task, far beneath them. Yet more vile still, are the miserable fuck-hats who believe that to walk their dog, they need only give them the free reign to come and go while their front door is left open. Overcome by complete freedom, these dogs tend to cheerily wander wherever they please, dropping little blobs of brown behind them as they go. Like some sort of grim, furry Pac-Man in reverse.

The incontestable truth is simply this; If you find yourself unable to clean up after your dog for the sake of complying with UK law, you were probably never fit to own one in the first place. Sadly, the concerned parties capable of reaching this conclusion, to the benefit of many others, are the same group of people least likely to accept it as fact. However, rather than despair over this sad realisation, I came up with a course of action which, if we all band together on, should eradicate the problem for good:
The next time you find yourself witness to the scene of an apathetic dog owner paying little heed to his or her dog, as they drop a dookie in a public place, simply stride over to said owner and grab them from behind, before firmly thrusting their face into the resultant brown mess. You may or may not wish to also to employ a shrill cry of "NO! THAT'S BAD!" to accompany your actions and perhaps even, once finished, you can strike them round the nose with a newspaper, just for good measure. It seems to work a treat with the pets themselves, let's hope it helps the message take hold with the pet owners.

With that vivid image no doubt sending me off to sleep tonight with a smile on my face, let us now visit the final bout of nastiness I had to endure today, and latterly the kind people who make these wondrous experiences possible.

The Trouble With Kids Today

As I now start to wind down with my final anecdote from the day's events I find myself slipping rather unpleasantly into a throbbing headache. Such I fear is not only the result of living out this long, abrasive Thursday but also from reliving it through the art of rage-fuelled black and white type-y words. For this very reason I will attempt to do this last event as much justice as I can in as few words as possible.

With the day panning out as the complete bust that it was; Discourteous motorists, wayward pavement poop and lest we forget, one whole eighth of a centimetre's snow fall. I volleyed an attempt to undo the damage that had been done to my psyche with that marvellous cure-all to stave off all others; ice cream. With a small child in tow, I set off to the local ice cream shop (which, remarkably also has a roaring side trade in groceries, house-hold items and even a post office!)

Infeasibly motivated to keep the amount of entailed fucking around to an absolute minimum (and with the day we'd already had, believe me it was more for the sake of others than myself) we promptly made our choice and headed for the counter. As usual, they had a overwhelming one whole cashier in place and as luck we had lined up just in time to wait behind some shambling degenerate junkie attempting to buy a pack of cigarettes with as much loose change as he could procure from his jacket pocket. With an ungodly amount of cursing and grunting he had eventually brought himself up to a mere pound from what he wanted. He decided to plump for a smaller pack over his original choice. With a chorus of sighs from all those in front and behind him, the counting started all over again.

The already minuscule amount of patience I had left for this man was stripped down even further when his son made an appearance at the counter. As he arrived two equally enraging events took place simultaneously. First of all, with a cry of "I want this!" the miserable little splodge of semen that should never have been threw a garishly packaged action figure at the girl serving at the checkout. Secondly, every coin his junky father had painstakingly counted on the counter was sent skiting off on to the floor. The cashier paused for a moment, presumably to allow the father a chance to dole out a reprimand for this act of misbehaviour. I quietly hoped she didn't have anywhere important to be if that was the case. A look of incensed rage glimmered over the woman's face and then, with a sigh, she bent down to reclaim some of the man's lost change.

It was then, in the grip of boredom that the boy decided to create his own entertainment in a repeatedly determined attempt to kick my daughter in the stomach. As his father had, since the airborne toy, decided to hold on to him in attempt to stop him wandering off again his little leg continued to fall short of Julia with each forward swing. She looked up to me with an expression that seemed to convey that she wasn't entirely familiar with the type of thing she was seeing at this precise moment. The icing on the cake came when the boy, at one point, swung his leg with such force he pulled his dad slightly off balance. The father turned around to see his son continuing to see his son make a repeated effort to plant his little shoe into my daughter's abdomen. Here it comes I thought. This is where we get to witness junkie parenting first hand as he spouts off some variation on the them of "Gonnae fuck that out you?" or "Stoap bein' a wee shite". I felt both robbed and enraged then when what he actually did was look from his son, to my daughter, and finally to me with a scowl that I should keep my daughter out of swinging range of his son's feet.

I'd finally had enough. All in one day I'd had road rage, shitty boots and now to cap it all off, some junkie piece of shit is looking at me as if he disapproves of my parenting methods. In a perfect just world this would would be the part where I pummel his gaunt seven-stone frame into the shop's floor, paid for my ice cream, but the world is far from perfect and I happened to standing under a security camera. Oh, and also crippled. I took one step forward until my nose was practically touching the back of his neck and began to heavy breath like a sex offender, down into the back of his coat. Not, I can honestly say, the biggest treat my sense of smell had ever had to endure. I almost found myself pining for the dog shit again. Almost but not quite. Whether then, he was able to pay for his cigarettes or not I do not know but after a quarter turn to look behind him, he grabbed his son by the hood of his coat and made a dash for the door. The cashier surveyed me critically, almost trying to infer by my appearance why I had decided to stick my face into the back of another man's head.
"I'm sorry," I began "It was either that or I was going to knock him out."
It appeared this was the explanation she was looking for. With a smile and a nod, she started to run through our ice creams.

It both deeply saddens and angers me whenever I see Junkies with children. Now, I of all people am fully aware that you can have a controlled drug problem and still be a fully component parent, So please know, that when I talk about junkies, I mean the rock bottom dregs of society. The type of person who trades in all their benefit money from day one on a nice big fat score and then survives the rest of the week on whatever they can suck up form their bedsit floorboards. People like this should not be allowed to be parents and, to link in to my last anecdote like the expert wordsmith I am, nor should they be allowed to be pet owners. An individual who can't bring stability to their own life should never be charged with responsibility for another. If I were to have my way, measures would be taken to ensure these people never get the opportunity to fuck up more than one life; their own. The ideal solution, in my eyes, is to monitor the progress of male children as they enter adolescence. The first sign of leaning towards a scumbag existence of hard drugs and care-free unprotected sex should see them collected by the government in a van, taken away to a facility where they they can't be heard and then have their testicles shattered with a rusty crowbar. Just think of all the money that could be saved in child benefit alone!

****

Yes, it's days like today that make me very glad to be a reclusive weirdo with very little need for human contact. I often wonder where all the hate I carry around with me stems from. Now the next time such a query arises all I'll have to do is step foot outside and it'll all come flooding back to me. As the vast majority of humanity never fail to disappoint me on a daily basis, I sometimes find it hard to justify their very existence. The best I'm ever able to come up with is that without other human interaction to distract and sometimes amuse me, I would most likely wank myself into a coma. I suppose even that has to count for something. Right?