Cracking Gum, Cracking Skulls

People who crack their gum in public should be executed. Well maybe not executed exactly but, at the very least, forced to do some serious hard labor. Every time I'm in the vicinity of a person chewing and cracking gum, or worse, blowing bubbles, I honestly find my fists clenched so hard that my fingernails break skin and my palms bleed. It's all I can do to keep from pummeling that person in a furious, chaotic display of violence. I remember hearing that awful story about the middle aged man who murdered a young guy on a bus in Canada. Seemingly the murder was unprovoked. It was a horrifyingly awful crime, no doubt. But you know what my first thought was? "I wonder if that young guy was cracking his gum." I bet he was.

You know who else stirs a terrifying rage in me? People who throw cigarette butts out of their cars. When I'm driving behind somebody and I see a butt just pop out I have to contain the severe urge to ram into the back of the car. The only thing that stops me is that I don't want the hassle of having to take out my insurance card and pretend to be sorry. Too much fucking work. My hatred for people that litter the roadways with this particular type of trash knows no bounds. My husband, Todd, is one of those people. And when I see him throw his just smoked cigarette out the window, I hate his guts too. I'm an equal opportunity hater. I don't care who you are. If you fucking piss me off, in that moment that I am pissed off, I will hate you.

Every once in a while, Todd and I and the rest of my family, will get up off our lazy asses and do some sort of 5k Walk to support breast cancer research. I mean I really don't understand what our taking a walk is proving, but apparently it's a powerful statement. Actually, I guess it is. We are not so much 5K people as we are 5 Keg people. We have to feel pretty passionate about a subject to not only walk that far, but use money that would otherwise be spent on beer and tacos to pay to walk that far. I guess breast cancer is a worthy enough cause, considering my sister died of it and all.


One year, I dragged Todd to one of these Race for the Cure events. Only it was more like "Mosey along" for the Cure, if you ask me. So we were taking our sweet old time meandering down the well-worn macadem path, and Todd takes out a cigarette.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm having a smoke. What does it look like?" And he lights it up.

"Ummm...this is a fucking "Cancer" walk. Do you really think it's appropriate to be smoking a cigarette?"

"Nobody is even around." I looked around. I think we were in last place.

"Whatever."

So he's smoking, and I'm fuming, and we're walking along just being our charitable, happy selves. After he takes his last drag, he tosses his butt onto the ground.

"Oh my god. We're at a state park, why are you littering?" I'm a total bitch, right? I was on a roll. He just laughed and ignored me. That is always the way. So I turned around and picked up the butt, sort of patted it on the pavement and chucked it in my purse to throw away in the next trash bin I passed. I just couldn't bear to leave it there on the ground. It just felt wrong.

So we're continuing on our little journey and chatting it up. The next thing I know there is SMOKE coming out of my purse. "What the fuck is that?" He says. So I open my purse and see that there is a little fire going on in there. I guess I didn't put out the cigarette all the way and it went ahead and lit my purse on fire. I throw my purse on the ground and start stomping on it like a crazy woman. Just as I'm jumping on my purse, a few stragglers in the "race" pass us. Of course. Of fucking course. See this is what I get for trying to be a "good" person. I get my handbag burnt all up.

What is the moral to this story? If I had to find one, if pressed, I would have to say that the moral is this: When things piss you off, don't try and make fucking nice. Crack skulls instead. Oh and cracking gum makes you look like an uneducated piece of trash.