The Herd Needs Thinning

 The Herd Need Thinning

By STU CASSELL | Highlands Today 

Published: April 21, 2011

It's funny what things bother people, and what things they hate. My older sister Carol gets truly annoyed with other drivers. As a teenager, I was able to add some really cool swear words to my vocabulary while riding in the car with Carol. She also taught me some interesting hand gestures imported from Italy.

I, on the other hand, am completely unbothered by anything anyone does while I'm in the car. I rarely use my horn except in instances where someone is close to colliding with me. My blood pressure will never suffer from anything that occurs in traffic. It's just not in my DNA.

My oldest son, Ben hates vegetables that grow in the ground, on a stalk, tree or bush and stupid people. Given that he has an extremely high IQ, the argument could be made that his distain extends to the majority of the people on this planet. If it were up to Ben, there would be mandatory intelligence testing, followed by state enforced neutering. He really thinks humans as a species have dropped the ball when it comes to Darwinism. For Ben, the herd needs thinning, starting with what he might call the "mouth-breathing knuckle scrapers."

Me, I'm not bothered by ignorant people to the point where I want to see them extinct. No, I just think they should all live together, away from normal folk — you know, someplace like Washington, D.C. (this is where you can finish the joke with your own punch line).

My wife, Mary Rose hates surprises and interruptions when she's trying to get something done. When Mr. Murphy established his law that states, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong," he probably used my wife as one of his first research subjects. If she's in the shower, the doorbell will ring. The dog can be outside for an hour, perfectly content to play in the yard, but as soon as Mary Rose goes upstairs to clean a room, he starts yelping to come back inside the house.

My list of hates is extensive, so I'll just talk about a few of them. I really hate it when I pay $8 to see a movie and I hear people talking after it starts. Really? You absolutely have to tell your friend about your visit to the proctologist while sitting in a large darkened room with 200 strangers who would like to hear the dialogue in the movie? Or even worse, that kid three seats over who insists on texting his friends using the phone with the screen bright enough to illuminate a small city. There are just so many things I can think of that I want to do with that phone, including where I want to shove it.

I hate people that litter. This hate has grown more intense since we bought a house on Main Street with a lot that people use as a trash can. Every day I'm out there picking up cigarette butts, plastic soda bottles, empty beer cans and candy wrappers. I just want to sit on my front porch with a tranquilizer gun, and when I see someone toss some trash in my front yard, bring them down with a dart to the neck. But then I'd have a problem disposing of the bodies. Still, one can fantasize.

At the top of my Things I Hate list are the drive-by stereo terrorists that blast their 10,000 watt car radios with their windows all the way down. I can't even hear the music, just the bass as my house shakes until they are a quarter mile away.

Maybe Ben's right; maybe the herd does need thinning.