Pat Benatar was wrong

Forget love, the mall parking lot is a battlefield.

Christmas is a time for family, love, gift giving and shared memories... or it used to be. I am not going to lie to you guys, we are all friends here, I lost all interest in Christmas about five years ago. Actually, it may be longer than that, maybe it was when I got my drivers license and discovered the roads were not about freedom to go wherever I wanted or a gateway to wild adventures, but rather an exercise in extreme frustration and anger management.

In fact when Albert Einstein said "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result" I believe he was talking about his daily commute to the patent office. I can probably pinpoint the exact day he thought of his famous quote, he was on his daily commute to the patent office and got cut off several hundred times, he wondered what the problem was, checked high and low for an answer, finally in his frustration he checked his lunar calendar to see if a full moon had snuck up on him only to discover it was December 1st and Christmas shopping had truly begun.

I might be speculating a little on the exact details of Einstein's epiphany, but I can't be far off. Every year Christmas comes around, and every year we all think it will be different from the year before. "Maybe that sweet grandmother down the street won't turn it a shrieking banshee in Zellers this year" we think to ourselves, but there she is every year, yelling and biting the hands of the woman she normally shares a bingo table with. I can take the yelling and screaming in the stores, I mean little Destiny does ABSOLUTELY NEED her zhu zhu, but I cannot take it when they take it to the streets.

Today I was leaving the gym, which is located in a large mall, and I had to summon all of the strength I had to keep me from committing vehicular homicide. I was waiting like a normal law abiding citizen at the three way stop for my turn to turn right, the person to the left of me goes, and following the law, I take my turn and go, but the person to my left had different ideas. I was about half way through my maneuver when she decides that the traffics laws are complete bunk, and races through the stop sign and cuts me off! I slam on my brakes, both in the car and on my rage, to avoid hitting this criminal. Now, normally I would fly off the handle, but I decided to just let it go and think happy thoughts. Maybe her marriage was falling apart and she was racing to couples counselling, or maybe he was hurrying to save a box of kittens from a burn buildings, but most likely she heard there was a sale on cable knit pink sweaters at Winners she REALLY wanted to her mother for Christmas. Anyway, shrugging this off was a big step for me, but then she had to ruin it. I am waiting behind this law breaker and she decides that it is me who is wrong, and she lets me know this by repeatedly show me the middle digit on her right hand. I am not normally a violent person, but on this day, my friends, my fists had "murder" written all over them. When we finally got onto the open road I tried to pull along side this outlaw to express my displeasure, but my 1994 corolla was no match for her 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee and she sped away. What would I have done if I had caught up to her? Well, that is for scholars to pontificate for years to come, but I can guarantee you it would have been hells bells, not Christmas chimes, she would have been hearing.