Petty Bothers That Will Drive You Crazy - Town

1. Choosing the wrong line. It happens at banks, at grocery stores, and at tollbooths: you pick the slowest-moving line. If you get on what clearly is the shortest line at the grocery store, for instance, the customer in front of you turns out to have purchased at least one item which no one knows the price of. With one eye you watch the endless consultations among supermarket personnel while with the other eye you watch the woman with sixty-three items who would've been ahead of you had you chosen the other line march out the door.

2. Crazy people are drawn to you. No matter how crowded the sidewalk or the train station might be, the crazy person finds you and comes over to you and starts talking to you about the brain police, or whatever the problem is.

3. Parallel parking. People stop walking or talking and turn to watch as you attempt to parallel park the car. They don't ever do this for anyone else.

4. Trying to find out the time. As you are driving toward a bank with an alternating time-temperature sign on it you decide you would like to know the time. Unfortunately, the sign is now in the temperature mode, which it holds until you draw abreast of the bank. Then it switches to the temperature-in-another-degree mode. By now you have driven past the bank and are risking your life by craning around and sticking your head out the window. When the time is finally shown, you have to try to read it through the rear-view mirror so that it is backwards and upside down and everything else. You end up having no idea what time it is.

5. At the movies. The person seated behind you has come to the theatre no to watch the film, but rather to rotate the contents of six paper bags.

6. Forgetting the most important thing. Planning a turkey dinner? Buy all the trimmings but forget about the turkey. Going to a play? Forget the tickets. Going abroad? Forget your passport. Things always to forget: the corkscrew, the flashlight, the bottle opener, the directions, in insect repellent, your sweater, an umbrella, the letter you meant to mail.

7. The familiar face. There is someone who goes to the same parties you do, to the same resturants or bars, whom you see, it seems, just about everywhere you go. Occasionally, this person will call you by your first name. When this happens you say, "Hi there!" and pretend that you are in a hurry.

8. Driving behind someone who has the directional blinker blinking but who does not turn. Morons are everywhere, of course, but why do they so often end up driving in front of you? As you finally pull even with these people and try to indicate that they have their blinker one, you invariably are met with a polite smile on a face that is so blank and simple that it gives you goose pimples.

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