Things I Just Don't Get

I’m on the interstate and a car cuts in from the left lane, clearing my front bumper by a good three or four inches. About two thirds of the way into the lane, the right turn signal starts blinking. Far from the first time I’ve seen this.

Do we need to explain the basic concept of a turn signal? Is there a significant portion of the population that fails to grasp that it’s intended to communicate an upcoming change of course, not one that has already occurred? File this among the myriad things I don’t understand.

Add to that the debit/check card. Why use your money to buy something instead of someone else’s? Why not use a credit card and collect the interest on your own money for a couple weeks, as well as establishing a good credit record? Some credit cards do charge interest on the running balance, but there are still those that don’t.

I also don’t get the vehicle window decal of a demented kid urinating on the logo of another vehicle make, and a similar mentality (or lack there of) in other subjects. What difference does it make to those people what other people drive? I was pumping gas into my Ford pickup last week and a truck of a different make pulled up to the next pump. It had one of those decals with the Ford logo as the target.

When no reaction on my part registered, the driver walked over to me and pointed it out with a grin. Surprisingly, he appeared to have all his teeth.

My response was a simple shrug and return of his smile. He was dumbfounded. Why would he think it mattered to me what he thought of Fords? Why would those whose intellectual and emotional evolution halted at the sixth grade assume that the juvenile things that raise their hackles even matter to the rest of us who employ brain mass greater than a legume?

Radio talk shows, editorial pages and the internet are littered with the ravings of thousands of rabid people who proclaim that the country is messed up, public officials don’t know what they’re doing, and they have the solutions. And yet, when I do volunteer work, vote, attend city council meetings, etc., I see maybe dozens. Where are all these “impassioned” people, and what makes them think they even know what goes on where the rubber meets the road, much less how to resolve the issues?

A child gets sent home from school for misbehavior. When and why did we go from the question being “What did you do?” to “What did they do to you?”

There’s not enough space to catalog all the things I don’t get. But, why does anyone care a fig about what absurd stunt Paris Hilton is pulling next?