I fear our county is being invaded by drivers from New York City or France. I say this because? Well lately I've been getting these honkers behind me in line at the traffic lights. They sit there reving their engines with their foot on the brake and when the  light changes they expect to take off at warp speed. I don't. Excuse me but I'm old. Besides that I drive a six-cylinder jeep with an automatic transmission and off the road tires. I'm not a NASCAR driver and this ain't qualifying day at the race track. I'm slow. Okay, sometimes I might doze off while waiting for the light to turn green but I'm just saying.

When we get older we tend to slow down a little. Okay, a lot. A friend of mine said it best when she admitted that it now takes her two hours to watch  "60 Minutes". When you reach a certain age in life you lose your desire to hurry. I suppose it's because life seems to pass by fast enough on its own without any help from us.

I used to do everything at the speed of light, but I always managed to suppress the urge to honk. I remember when I was raising a family and working full time outside the home. Working mothers always have to do everything in a hurry. There are only 24 hours in a day and if one didn't hurry, there would be no time left for sleeping. I used to do twice the things in half the time that it now takes me all day to do half of. (and please don't ask me to repeat what I just said...it took me an hour to say it the first time).

For 17 years I worked at one of our local factories. I worked the midnight shift which was from 4 p.m until midnight. My son was in school so that meant I had to get up at 6:30 a.m. and get him ready for school. This left me with the whole day to fly around and get my work done before I went to work. I would clean the house, do the laundry, run errands for my myself, my mother and my sister, cook dinner, grab a shower and if I was lucky have a few minutes extra to comb my hair before I went to my evening job.

During the summer months I also kept my mother's and my sister's lawns mowed. I would usually mow the lawns on Monday because by Wednesday I was staggering around, exhausted and running mostly on autopilot. That's the good thing about manual labor. Once you learn your job and after you've done the exact same thing for several years, you can do it without thinking about it.

However, this can lead to severe mental and physical issues if not treated. I remember one morning after taking my son to school I was so exhausted I decided I would go back to bed for "just a little while" and rest.  I woke up after two hours and looked at the clock. In a panic I saw that it was almost 10 a.m.  My first thought was that I had overslept and he was late for school. I jumped out of bed (I could do that then because I was still in my twenties) and I ran to my son's room. He wasn't there. I ran through the house calling for him but he was nowhere to be found. I immediately went into a sobbing fit, because I thought someone had sneaked in and kidnapped him during the night.  I was on my knees on the kitchen floor, bawling my eyes out and trying to dial the sheriff's department when I remembered that I had already taken him to school. I don't think I took another morning nap for the next ten years. Or at least until he was old enough to shave and drive himself to work.

I can certainly understand whenever someone is in a hurry. I can also understand their  overwhelming need to honk at the driver in front of them who appears to be dawdling. However, I would rather they didn't. If all the hurriers will begin practicing patience now, it will help them when they become the worn out shell shocked veterans of the rat race who fall asleep at traffic lights.

I still consider honking to be poor driving etiquette. Besides that it scares the bejeepers out of me. It is also the number one cause of road rage. I learned about that from a bumper sticker the other day. It read: "Keep Honking - I'm Reloading".

The only thing I hate more than a stinking nasty house fly is...mm...having my eye gouged out with a fondue fork.

Flies are the nastiest creatures on planet earth. In fact their natural habitat is anyplace  where there is decaying organic matter or waste, which is the polite word for the droppings left behind by animals and chickens. This is where flies breed and grow.

According to my research, warm summer conditions are best for the development of the house fly, and it can complete its life cycle in as little as seven to ten days. As many as 10 to 12 generations may occur in one summer. That's a lot of dirty flies buzzing around covered in "organic matter".

When I was a child growing up in the country during the 1950's it was common for the folks in the area to raise hogs, chickens, cows and horses, and to have "organic matter" spread on their gardens in the early part of the planting season. The flies were in hog heaven. They went forth and multiplied...many times over.

Air conditioning was something few if any homes had during that time. One was lucky to own a small window fan to create a breeze on the hottest days of summer. The window screens back then were made of wider weave than they are now and they often got torn in places by rowdy kids. (not me of course...the others were the rowdy kids). This was the prefect entry way for the stinking nasty flies to get into the house. That and us standing with the screen door open until Mama yelled at us to "get in or out one; you're letting the flies in!"

Mama was continually spraying fly spray, swatting them with a fly swatter that she carried on her hip at all times much like a cowboy packing a six-gun. And she used fly paper strips.
She would hang the long strips which were covered in sticky goo in each room of the house. I wish I had a nickle for every time I climbed on a chair and got stuck in one of those icky gooey strips, my hair all wound up in with the flies that were sticking to it. I would stand there screaming until Mama came and un-stuck me and washed off the life threatening, horrible, "my-gosh-your-liable-to-get-diphtheria-or-smallpox" germs. Of course this didn't do much to alleviate my disgust for the nasty creatures. I would shiver for hours afterward.

So now, one day last week I was sitting at my desk and I hear this buzzing sound. I immediately thought to myself, "housefly!!"  The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere near my right ear. "Buzz, buzz."  I slapped the air around my head and the noise stopped. I typed a few more words and "buzz, buzz" - next to my ear the same as before. I went into the utility room and got the fly swatter. As we all know (well those of us who are familiar with a pesky fly), once you get a newspaper or a fly swatter the fly goes and hides until you put your weapon  down.  I guess twenty minutes went by when suddenly "buzz buzz"...the sound near my right ear came again.

Frustrated and angry I jumped out of my chair and began slapping at the air around my head with my hands and the fly swatter, slapping at my hair and basically acting like a crazed lunatic. Finally after I had slapped myself silly, the buzzing sound came again just as my granddaughter walked into the office. She reached above my head and took something off the shelf over my desk.

"I forgot my cell phone and left it here," she said.

At that moment I heard the fly buzz again. "Where is that dang fly?" I shouted, my patience gone.

"Mamaw-Honey, that's my cell phone. I have it set to vibrate," she said. "Ha...it does sound like a bee buzzing around. How! cool! is! that!"

I just looked at her and said,  "?"

Life gets you right here sometimes, right in the old ticker, doesn't it?  With all the talk of global warming, the rising cost of...umm...everything, the subprime mortgage meltdown, kids with metal objects stuck through their tongue, food insecurity, road rage...its enough to make us question our very existence.

Sometimes we're compelled to sit down and do a little soul searching. We must delve deep within our subconscious and ask ourselves some very profound questions. Questions like, What is our purpose here on this earth, what exactly is the meaning of life, what can I do to improve my overall situation, and why does Apple Inc insist on capitalizing the wrong letter in all its consumer electronics and software products?  

There's the iPod, the iPhone, iMac, iWork, iTunes; what will they come up with next; the iMstupid? I think they need a refresher course in eNglish gRammar. My former English professor would turn over in his grave at that last sentence. (If he was dead, I mean.)

Speaking of grammar...we were speaking of grammar weren't we?  One of the latest trends in language is the practice of mutating more than one word to form a new word. Like the word "confuddled" for example. This is a combination of "confused" and "befuddled" which makes it an even stronger description of one's state of misunderstanding. Then there's the "stalkerazzi" which are tabloid reporters (and I use the term reporters loosely) who stalk  celebrities in order to snap personal and embarrassing photos of them. Or how about "grandiloquence" which is a combination of "grandiose" and "eloquence". Or my personal favorite, "gianormous" which combines "gigantic" with "enormous" and describes my B-hind in a pair of jeans. By the way, these words are referred to as "slanguage". Which of course means "slang language".

Another funny aspect of the English language is the way words can mean different things according to their arrangement in a sentence.
 
Back in the early '80s before the Internet and email, I wrote a letter and mailed it to a friend  who lives in Minnesota. It was during the fall and the leaves were so bright and colorful I decided to send some photos of our mountains and other scenery around the area.  Here is a sentence I wrote in the letter:

The following week I received this response:
I still laugh about that to this day. I think that must have been the beginning of my career as a humor columnist.

Another friend of mine whose humor column appears in a Philadelphia daily newspaper mentioned that his editor corrects his grammar so thoroughly that it often  removes some of the humor from his work. In order for a humor piece to be...well...humorous, it needs to read the way we talk. Now I don't condone using incorrect grammar but let's face it; how many of us talk like a page out of a book of English literature? Honestly, which of the following sentences is funnier:
(A.) Do not force me to connect the underside of this synthetic foul with the upper section of your cranium. Or: (B.) Don't make me smack you upside the head with this rubber chicken.

If the sentence is too grammatically correct it comes off sounding stiff and flat. Nobody thinks stiff and flat is funny....especially if a car just ran over the family cat...

Personally I think the answer is: (C.) You see this chicken...!?

There is a time and a place for incorrect grammar, poor punctuation and even incorrect spelling. Which proves the adage "there is a time and a place for everything".  But to the makers of all the Apple iProducts...uhh...this ain't it. I hate it when people dot their i at me!