Are You Freaking Kidding Me?

Every once in a while, I find myself getting annoyed at the rank idiocy of complete strangers.  Today was one of those days. That'll teach me to go to Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon again.

When we got there, a straggle of young women and small babies were exiting the building.  In front was a girl--probably no older than sixteen--smoking an almost-gone cigarette that was dangling out of her mouth a scant inch away from her infant's face.  The baby couldn't have been more than two or three months old.  What killed me was that she walked out of the store doing that and apparently no one stopped her and said anything to her.

Now, I'm a smoker. I trust that I'm a courteous one. I obey regulations about smoking when I'm out in public. But even when I was young and dumb, I never NEVER smoked a cigarette while holding one of my children! Christ on a stick--I didn't even smoke in the same room with them. And even then, I never walked around a store with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth!  No one can do a damn thing about what this...erm...woman is doing to that poor baby, but surely someone in the store could have said something to her about smoking so obviously in a non-smoking (by law) establishment?  Hell, when I was tending bar and someone fired up a cigarette (certainly understandable, in my point of view) I would kick them out of the bar to finish their smokes in accordance with the law.

What a world we live in!

Then, on the way home, a car full of teenagers decided it would be fun to pass in the median.  There was only about half a foot of solid ice on it, after all.  Hitting that at about sixty miles an hour would be jolly good fun, right?

Especially when they did a 360 and--much to their invincible dismay--ended up in the ditch.  Fortunately, no one was hurt and the kids walked away, but the testimony given to the cops by the witnesses probably bodes nothing but ill for that young driver when his parents came to pick him up.

And then, much to my horror, the kids next door stole a march on us this year.  Instead of our anatomically correct snowmen being the featured frozen display on our street the new kids that live next door spent much of the last two days constructing a snow fort. It's a damned good one too, bidding fair to be a sizeable igloo just as soon as they figure out how to make the roof stay up.

Unbelievable!

Makes me glad I'm staying at home tonight, especially after watching my beloved University of Tennessee Volunteers shock the #1 team in the country (Kansas) by beating the crap out of them with our second string. And good on you, Bruce Pearl, for placing the integrity of the program above the pressure to win. 

As you can see, we didn't need the alleged law-breakers on the floor to take down one of the most powerful teams in the country.

Yep. Topsy turvy everywhere.  What's next, I ask you? Pete Carroll bailing on USC for the NFL right before the NCAA wipes out about six years' worth of records? The Baltimore Ravens finally beating the Patriots in the wildcard game? The government penalizing citizens who can't afford health insurance?

Ha!  Thank God there are some things in life I can always, absolutely count upon.