Social Mores

We are amidst the season folks. It is that time of year that we venture into public, some of us against our better judgement, to obtain that perfect material indulgence that our loved one can not live without.

I am, when it comes to the gift giving/receiving aspect of Christmas, a major Scrooge. With a capital Bah-Hum-bug. It boils down to me busting my ass to invest money in something that amounts to foreign crap! And when the day is over, it's not as if most of us can spare the change for what we end up purchasing. We all end up with the obnoxious applique that our beloved, pain-in-the-ass, in-law spends money they don't have, on. And we are, STUCK with it.

I know, I know, it's the thought that counts. But in some cases, there is no thought. And worse, I have to brave some of the morons that make the same shopping forays as myself. Please, it is the season! Gotta buy, buy, buy. Stuff, stuff, stuff!

Case in point.....T.J. Maxx. I reported recently on the innocent "fluff" emitted by an sweet elderly gentlemen as we exited dress-up church. Ha ha, funny. Standing in line to pay for our purchases recently at T.J. Maxx, my ears were perked when a strange but somehow familiar sound pierced the air. What could it be? Somehow I knew the sound. Oh, wait, I know. I hear it in my kitchen when my Offspring assault each other with flatulence and giggle at the sound that they can reverberate off my kitchen chairs!! They find that if they lean just right the sound emanates outward and is amplified off the chair and echos in the room thanks to my hardwood floors. Funny? When you're six. When you're in your 50's? In a crowded department store? Eh, not so much. I did have the inclination to giggle until I got a glimpse of the perpetrator. Talking on her cell phone to what sounded like a high school child she needed to pick up in few minutes. She actually leaned over in the chair she was sitting in a grunted it out. GRUNTED IT OUT!! Are you fucking kidding me?! Seriously!

That was, topped only by tonight's encounter. As I wandered the isles at the grocery store with my husband. We encountered a small crowd in front of us. Mangey, disgustingly dressed and looking rather unkempt your thought might have been that they were, well, homeless. But no, the attire was completely deliberate. Adorned with horrible tattoos (I like tattoos, but please put some effort into it) and bra less in tank tops I could only wonder...What the hell? (It is winter after all, it's COLD outside!) Until one so eloquently glanced over her shoulder and pulled her pants a little lower for us to catch a glimpse not only of her muffin top, Oh Ghawd, but her lovey, pink, leopard print THONG!! She appeared to think nothing of this and even seem to hope that it was, mmmm, sexy?

Look, I pride myself on being able to see the humor in humans. In the things we do and say without thinking. I excel at putting my foot in my mouth. Therefore, I understand that we all do things, especially in public, that will be, well, uncouth. But, why oh why, in a crowd of holiday shoppers would the latter two stories be anything but inappropriate. Manners people, we had them at some point in our lives, what the hell happen to them?