Be Cool, I Say!

Let me put it on record now that I fucking HATE anal-retentive people. We all know those kinds of people; the ones that make a big fucking deal about the absolutely stupidest and most inconsequential of things. These are the kinds of people that walk into Starbucks and bitch and moan for about five minutes over the fact that the sugar-free vanilla syrup has run out. "OH MY GAWD! You're ACTUALLY OUT of sugar-free vanilla SYRUP!? How can that BE!? How can you do this to ME!?"

Yes, bitch. The thought of us running out of a flavor syrup is, gasp, worse than world hunger. How dare we do such a thing!

Unfortunately, these kinds of people are not just confined to your local Starbucks, either. They're fucking everywhere. At least around here in Syracuse. I think that the largest population of anal-retentive people, outside of Long Island, resides right here in Syracuse University. People like these assume that the entire world revolves around them, and that if things don't go their way, time must stop in order to remedy the situation. And we're talking about the most meaningless things. Like, let's say, someone is five minutes late to meet up someone to go hang out on a night off. The anal-retentive would spend the next 45 minutes complaining about how this one individual was five minutes late. Just about anything could've caused the five-minute delay, but they really don't care. All they worry about is the fact that for five minutes, things didn't go their way. These are the kinds of people that actually have a SCHEDULE made up for hanging out. And I mean schedule, like, "At 8:44 PM, we will walk out of Bar A and make it to Bar B at 8:47 PM." And if they make it to Bar B at 8:49 PM, all of a sudden, their life is ruined.

A few days ago, this one girl blew up on me for not calling her at 10:00 PM. I called her at 11:00 PM, instead, because I had to work a bit later than usual. She spent 15 minutes bitching and moaning at me for not calling her at 10 on the dot. I spent the entire time just standing there and letting her talk. Finally, when she realized that I wasn't responding, she finally said, "Don't you have anything to say about this!?"

"Not really. I'm just waiting for you to realize that you just spent the last 15 minutes screaming about a delayed phone call."

"Oh, and that's not a big deal?!"

"No, it isn't. Be thankful that A) I at least called you back, and B) that I didn't drop kick you 14 minutes ago for screaming at me in the same tone that my mother does."

After I said that, I guess she saw the anger that had been building up in my eyes, and she immediately calmed down. She looked down at her feet, and then looked back up at me, and then blurted out, "How do you do it? How do you go around life being as lackadaisical as you are?"

I only shook my head at her, almost in the same way that I do to someone that I feel absolutely sorry for. I think I even sighed at one point.

"See, I do get angry, but not for things like this. I get angry for things like bad politics, racial profiling, world hunger, the Hurricane Katrina debacle, people dying, and spoiled brats attempting to talk down to me. I don't waste my energy sweating the small stuff."

She looked at me like I was speaking another language. I couldn't take her stupidity anymore so I just turned around and walked away.

"Wait, where are you going?! We're not done yet!"

"Oh, we are. We definitely are. Besides, right now, you're making me late for something else."

"And what could that be!?"

I just laughed, and then framed my response in a way that she would understand.

"I scheduled some free time for myself at 11:30 PM. I'm three minutes late."