P.S. I Hate You

Posted on by

1. You there, with the new blonde highlights, who manages the office at my daughter’s school. Hold still. You asked me to write a procurement letter for the school’s auction, which I did happily. I drafted it up from scratch and it was perfect, I tells you. Don’t tell me that you are going to make edits for the letter’s audience and then MOVE MY FUCKING COMMAS AROUND. Is your “audience” a bunch of seventh graders from Portugal? Because perhaps they would not notice how ESL-riffic you made my mechanically-perfect letter.

2. Hey, dickhole. Yes, you, downstairs neighbor. You may think it’s super off-the-chain that your bass and amp sounds like a medium-sized jet taking off. We’ve also noticed that you’ve scheduled some late-night flights recently, if you know what I mean. We are still sleeping in the living room so when you practice the vibrations go right into our skulls as we are trying to sleep. Last Friday night you practiced so loudly you scrambled my precious brain cells that were desperately holding onto the twelves timetables and most of the names of the Thundercats. Thank Fuck I can still remember Cheetara.

But that’s all right. Because your bedroom is right below the room my baby sleeps in. We all wake up NICE AND EARLY around here. And tomorrow I am going to teach Franny how to play Mary Poppins, which I used to play when I was five. Grab your umbrella, Baby Cat, because the bed’s the roof and the floor’s the street. Mary Poppins floats down from the sky at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. Repeatedly.

3. Before I forget…you, Princess, with the new baby in my favorite neighborhood restaurant. God your baby is so fucking cute. I have to admit that my last one looked a little bit like a baloney loaf for the first month or so, but yours is a looker. But not when she’s fucking crying all through lunch. I know cries. Infants kind of all sound the same, in the beginning. That wasn’t a hunger cry or a pain cry. Jiggling your baby around in her little baby bucket and shaking an electronic doodad in her face is not going to placate her.

Do you know why she’s crying? DO YOU? ALLOW ME TO BUY YOU A VOWEL HERE. Get ready…babies LIKE TO BE HELD. She is crying because she wants to be picked up and held. I know, WHAT? Human beings crave contact and comfort from their mothers? They don’t want to spend their infancy in those plastic baby bucket car seats? I KNOW, NEWS FLASH FOR REALS. You may email me the Nobel Peace Prize for making this startling discovery.

This is not rocket science, people. This is not even the Chemistry for Fucking Morons class they forced me to take in high school because I can’t even add with a calculator. If you have a baby, hold it. It’s not a fucking purse dog. Maybe you should have gotten a fucking purse dog. The woman who was sitting across from you, who I presume was your mother-in-law, who was white-knuckling the table because her granddaughter needed to be picked up called. She says you should have gotten a purse dog instead.

23 thoughts on “P.S. I Hate You”

  1. “Hatred! The only thing that lasts!” — Barfly

    I’m wondering if your irony here is intended. I don’t know if I hate people so much anymore, as much as I’m annoyed and frustrated with myself at failing to interface with their quirks and habits. Granted, just last weekend, I told an abortion activist, who was holding a placard reading “Women Deserve Better Than Abortion” on a BART train, “Human beings deserve better than fascist zealots,” hardly my best witticism. I was then told by this older fellow (funny how these twerps always seem to look just this side of disinterred) to “Repent!” The moment of course so fundamentally disarming my adrenaline and making me see the absurdity of my need to respond in a churlish way to this offensive and wholly grotesque stimuli. Did I hate him? I don’t know. I suppose I just hated his mentality and how it affected culture at large.

    Perhaps this is what hate is in the end: not so much outright hostility, but an attempt to negotiate that gray area between the easy task of demonizing someone and the need to respond to injustices.

  3. Comma Bitch is the worst. I’m angry on your behalf. I think you are within your rights condescendingly to inform her of her errors, with a smile on your face.

    Lion-O is the only Thundercat I remember. I was able to visualize Cheetara, but I kept thinking “She-ra.” Wrong animated series.

  4. Awesome. You made my day! Except you forgot about the guy in meetings that always rambles on off topic.

  7. Please do not wish a dog on the child-neglector. She should have gotten a stuffed animal. Living things need affection.

    Comma bitches must die. Put a red pen in your purse with a copy of Copy-editing: the Cambridge handbook (Butcher, 1975), and take your next opportunity to school her highlighted ass. You’ll feel better. I did this to a science teacher in high school and got detention, but I’m sure you’ll have better luck.

  10. Damn RIGHT with the commas. You tell her.

    And do you think you can hold a baby too much? I think that’s something I learned at my daughter’s (former) daycare. There are babies there that come in spoiled because their parents held them all the time and they cried when they were put down. Y’gotta break ’em, yes?

  11. I am making copies of this and giving one to everyone highlighted-comma-Nazi I know as well as my Redneck, loud-ass, country-music listening neighbors and that woman who always is at the grocery store when I am and who lets her baby scream. Perhaps Miss Highlites could remind me of my former sentence…it is a bit of a run-on.

  14. I’m jumping back in to say no, you can’t hold a baby too much. It’s a paradox really–you hold them so much they get all confident and run away from you. Sad panda!

  15. Here’s some excellent advice special for you(taken from Wish Jar Journal-http://www.kerismith.com/blog/archives/000329.html).

    “Learn to say, ‘Fuck You’ to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose-sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO. Don’t worry about cool. Make your own uncool.

    Make your own, your own world.”

    (excerpted from “The Accidental Masterpiece” by Michael Kimmelman)

    Though they really should amend the part about NOT nose-sticking, ass-gouging and eyeball-poking to celebrate your mad skills in those departments.

    :)

  16. Oh, my head. Just discovered your blog and lost a half hour looking thru your archives. So glad you found your way back to blogging, and that I found my way here. Funny, accurate shit.

  19. I hated to be held as a baby. And my sister hated it too, but that was because she was the only baby in a small town, and everyone wanted to hold the babeeeee. Whereas I just didn’t like the feeling of another person being all holdy of me. Course. Now I like it. Go figure.

    You make me happy, SJ. With your writing so pandemical.

  21. ESL-riffic! That fuckin’ cracks me up!

    I’m sure I look INSANE, sitting here at the reference desk, laughing my ass off over your blog (as usual). Good thing the boss is gone….

  22. I am the real Tits Mc Gee.

    My advice is to

    1. Put “cancelled” notices over the school auction ads.

    2. Break into his house and replace his CD’s with recordings of your baby crying.

    3. Pick up her baby yourself, mime dropping it, then hand it to her!

Comments are closed.