Seriously?

Did you ever see something that made you say out loud to yourself...seriously? Did you really just do that in front of me? Did that really just happen? I seem to be a non compos mentis magnet this week...or maybe I'm just noticing the crazy more than usual.

Take, for example, the other day at Lowe's. I was coming out of the store and headed toward my car when I saw a woman walking in the opposite direction toward the store. She was flossing her teeth as she walked. Really. Not picking at a stray food particle with her fingernail. Not employing a toothpick that she'd just picked up at the cash register of her local eatery after a fine dining experience. Oh no. We're talking Full-On Flossing, like with for real dental floss. She had the sawing motion going and everything.

Curious, and slightly disturbed, I sat in my car and continued to watch as she approached the entrance. Step. Saw. Step. Saw. She was flossing in rhythm with her steps--an admirable accomplishment, but still. I was horrified, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. It was like a train wreck. I wondered what she would do with the floss, knowing all the while that this could not end well. I knew from the very depths of my soul that the floss would never make it to the trash can at the front of the store. Sure enough, she tucked the offending piece of string back into her purse! Euw! What? Is she saving it to use again later? People are just nasty.

Then, on the drive home, I pulled up to a traffic light behind a Bubba. Now, I live in Tennessee, so there are quite a few Bubbas of my acquaintance. Some of them are actually named Bubba; for others it's more of a lifestyle choice. This guy was more like a Bubba Jr. Wannabe. He was driving a reddish-orange tricked out pickup truck with low-riding wheels on the back. The truck was so shiny that you could just tell that he'd never used the vehicle to do any actual real macho work. In fact, it looked like the kind of truck that would be afraid it would break a nail if it tried to haul anything.

The clincher though was the sticker in the back window, which read, "No fat chicks. Back end will scrape." I wanted to pull up beside the obviously struggling with his masculinity driver and say, "Excuse me? You should be grateful to ANY chick who would be seen in this limp-wristed, sorry excuse for a truck with you. Here in the South, "chicks" generally prefer guys who have a little something more going on under the hood, if you know what I mean."

Then tonight I saw yet another vehicle whose driver was clearly hoping to date a real, live woman at some point in his life, but would probably be living with his mama into his late forties and saying, "Do you want fries with that?" at work every day. I'm sure you've seen these trucks with the fake testicles hanging from the trailer hitch. Really? Really? You need to justify your lack of cajones by giving some to your truck? Seriously? That's too pathetic to even be sad.

Citizens of Tennessee: please try very hard to keep your crazy to yourself. I teach public school, so I'm all stocked up. I don't need your 27 varieties of mental illness in my day. Thanks.