Listen, I give up my subway seat to pregnant ladies, injured fellow commuters, and elderly ladies and gents. If I have 50 items in my shopping cart and you’re only buying a quart of milk, I’ll probably let you go in front of me. I forward my various friends-and-family coupons to all and sundry. I give money to the Salvation Army and the mariachi bands that like to play on the R line. I love, respect and fear my mom and dad. I am a loyal-until-death friend. But honestly? Sometimes I worry that I am kind of a bad person.
A Baddy McBadderton, if you will.
I hate, hate, hate, hate clapping. I’ll do it for 30 seconds, and after that I just get annoyed and stop and become the asshole that won’t clap for an awesome performance. Clapping makes my hands hurt. Don’t even get me started on standing ovations.
When I was teenager, I regularly forced my younger brother El Papo* to go buy me Silhouette and Harlequin romance novels at the local Hallmarks store. I also made him go rent me Sixteen Candles/Some Kind of Wonderful/Breakfast Club and other eighties movies. Were my legs broken? Was there something preventing me from doing these tasks myself? No. I was – am, always will be – just lazy.
When I am out and about, I regularly give unruly kids dirty looks, and when their parents aren’t looking, I mouth at them to SHUT.UP.
I get sick, sad, elitist pleasure from being able to skip all the plebes waiting to check in to their flights or clear security thanks to my handy dandy Gold Elite frequent flier status.
Let’s just say that holding elevator doors for people is not my favorite thing to do in the world.I *do* it, it just annoys me.
I habitually drink the last of the water and don’t refill the carafe. This has driven both my father and Kim Jong-Illmatic insane for many years.
Given the choice, I will go sit in between two guys spread out over three subway seats rather than take a more comfortable seat. I feel I am teaching them a lesson.
I once accidentally walked out of a Gap store with a rain parka…and didn’t return to the store to return the item. Thirteen years later, I still feel incredibly guilty. This hasn’t stopped the same thing from recently happening with apples and other round produce.
If someone’s telling me a story for the second/third/fourth time, I can’t help myself – I tell them I’ve heard it before, even though I know they’ll get a disappointed, downcast look on their face. Does this stop moi from repeating stories from time to time? Not. At. All.
If someone tells me they think Mark Wahlberg is a good actor, I have less respect for them then I would normally have. Yes, that includes you, Kim Jong-Illmatic.
I’m a cash deadbeat. I almost never have cash on me. Poor Kim Jong-Illmatic – he ends up having to pay for my ice cream cravings, my cigarettes (even though he doesn’t smoke anymore), my lotto tickets, my Diet Cokes-in-a-can.
I can't say I was overcome with sadness when Michael Jackson died. I mean, as a fellow human being was sad a man with an apparently horrible life came to such a depressing end, but I wasn’t personally affected – the way a lot of my friends and family appeared to be.
I find Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude unbearable. And no, I will not give it another chance, so save your breath and don’t try and convince me that it’s the masterpiece to end all masterpieces.
I once was running a 6K with one of my best friends in the world, and 10 minutes into the race I told her we'd have to run the rest of race separately, because she was already annoying me.
Oh, God. Am I going to hell? Does this mean you - my handful of readers out there - are going to stop reading my blog?! Do you all hate me now?! But I’ll bake you some delicious home-made cupcakes!
P.S. Kim Jong-Illmatic claims there’s a lot more that could be added to this list.*Not really his name – Papo is a nickname from when he was about 3 years old, back when he couldn’t pronounce my name and called me Chacha instead (short for “muchacha”). Now that he’s older, he’d like to be known as El Papo.
© Chommo, 2009.
