Sweetness & Light

While I appreciate and admire it in others, it's no secret that when they passed out sweetness and light, I took a step sideways. There are days when I feel I met my quota twenty years ago and for the most part, am now niceness-depleted.

So when the elderly woman with the sneer stormed into the waiting room and snarled at me that I hadn't called her to remind her of her appointment, I was defensive. It could be, I suggested as mildly as I could but hearing the edge of sarcasm in my voice anyway, that it's because your appointment isn't until next week. She gave me a look of utter disbelief then threw the sign in clipboard at me. I never saw the like! she snapped, I'm going to find a doctor who is actually in the office more than he's out! None of you have the first idea of what you're doing! I could have let her go, should have let her go, and I almost did but at the last moment I couldn't resist the urge to wish her a nice day - in my best drop dead tone. As she stalked out, I remembered my last conversation with her - she'd been hostile and rude and I'd almost run out of patience and tact then - the airborne clipboard sealed the deal for me and I crossed out her name on the next week's schedule and neatly wrote in DO NOT

REAPPOINT - SHE THROWS THINGS.

It's precisely this kind of encounter that has led to my current state of mind.

Contrary to popular opinion, it's not just as easy to be nice, especially to idiots or manner-less, sneering old women or insurance companies with attitudes. Rumor has it that I was once overheard to ask, What, are you from the f**king stone age, after finally losing my temper with an insurance rep I'd been unsuccessfully trying to reason with for a half hour - I honestly don't recall that exact

incident but I have to admit that it sounds like me, driven to distraction by a lethal combination of stupidity, stubbornness and a failure to speak English.

There was even a time when I believed that profanity was the last resort of a limited mind - better to call someone a jaundiced secretion of a bilious toad's eye (Fawlty Towers) rather than the more common and overused son of a bitch - but linguistic creativity is overrated in today's society. If you have to translate the profanity for the offending fool, it loses effect.

"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer".

Mark Twain

My kind of guy, that Mark Twain.