A Slight Rant

I am not very patient with people who think that they know everything. There are two kinds of people like this. My sister, for example, is the first kind. I find this kind fairly amusing, surprisingly. I can ask A anything in the world and if she doesn't know the answer, she simply makes one up. She never misses a beat while the scientifically logical made up response rolls off her tongue as though she has been teaching it as fact for years. She claims she does this only to me because I am so quick to believe her but I have a feeling she does it to more people than she cares to admit. I had an old roommate who did the exact same thing. Shari, if you are reading, "clearly the dishwasher fills all the way up with water"! The second type of know it all is the kind that drives me up the wall. They are the kind that constantly have to assert themselves while in a group of people and frequently have zero idea what they are talking about. My father would say they are the type of people who are often wrong, but seldom in doubt. I feel like I am always a day behind on my bus stop stories to y'all but yesterday I came across a Type 2 know it all and it was all I could do not to correct her.

About 4 days ago around 10pm Deaner and I heard a child throwing a royal tantrum outside our hotel room window. The mother was at the door of the hotel and the father was closer to the child, who had thrown himself on the sidewalk kicking and screaming about not wanting to come inside the hotel. The father was trying to coax the child into coming inside. Now, at 10pm you can bet your butt I would have thrown any child of mine over my shoulder and brought him inside. There is no reasoning with an exhausted child, who presumably flew 9 hours from the States that day and was just arriving. But this retarded father kept asking the child to "please come here". I could have beaned the father. However, it was the mother's voice that nearly made me lose control. She stood outside SCREAMING at her husband at the top of her lungs to just go get the child. Now, I agree with the fact that the Father was being a retard, but the entire hotel does NOT want to hear you scream at your husband over this. We pretty much saw the whole thing go down. Strike one against this lady.

The next afternoon I held the elevator door for a husband, wife, child, and wife's mother (this is a guess but if you saw these two ladies you would know too). Big mistake. The elevators here are SMALL and as soon as they all crammed in with me I immediately recognized the shrill voice that had screaming at her husband the night before. For some reason the elevator stops on the 3rd floor while we are all going up and the wife snarles at the husband "hold on to the baby or else he will run off the elevator". Husband snarles back "you need to chill the hell out, he is fine, and he isn't going anywhere". Elevator door opens on wrong floor and there goes the child. He takes off in a full sprint while the wife screams at the husband about how stupid he is and he completely ignores her. I stupidly hold the elevator door for them to all get back on. I should have exited and taken the stairs the last two flights.

Well, yesterday morning I made my way to the bus stop and low and behold wife, mother, and child are there. I note that the child is drinking COKE out of a sippy cup. Here in Germany there is a letter called an Eszett and it looks like this ß. It is actually the equivalent to a double "s". (see Mom & Dad, all those years of German were worth it!) The word for "street" in German is "straße" which is pronounced Strasse. (strass-ah). So this blow hard of a lady is talking at the top of her lungs to everyone at the bus stop about how her and her mother are going to Target that day. WAIT A SECOND, HOLD THE PHONE!! Target?? Even I perked up and tuned in knowing full well that she was dead wrong about this one. She proceeded to give every poor dumb hopeful American directions to the "Target" by saying "First you go down Rhein Straba, then you turn on another STRABA and then the Target is located on such and such Straba. She thought that the ß was pronounced as a B! I can understand that this is probably a fairly common mistake but I already can't stand this lady and here she is running her mouth again! At this point I couldn't take it any longer and I asked her if she was talking about a store called "Real" (pronounced Ree-all) and not a store that was an actual Target. She very curtly said yes, that is it. Well I didn't inform her that Real is in fact, not a Target at all, and from what I hear, pretty far from it. I figured I would just let her navigate herself down all those strabas to get there. When she started going on and on about how there was a STARBUCKS right by the TARGET I didn't even bother to tell her that there was a Starbucks about a 3 minute walk away from the hotel. Some people have to learn the hard way!!