folks don't know how to act

Mr. Risky Business and I weren't even out of the car in the parking lot at GPAC on Thursday night (on our way to see David Sedaris, who was nothing less than brilliant) when I spotted some hooligans dressed in jeans and tee shirts with tickets in hand and with that, my first rant of the evening had begun.

At that moment I told Mr. RB, if we're going to keep going out of the house ("That will tend to happen," he said) then you need to be prepared to listen to my speech on how people don't know how to act, because you've already heard it once before tonight and I can guarantee you're gonna hear it again. I don't care if it makes me sound like I'm 85 and pointing my cane at somebody. Were you raised in a barn? Put on some damn clothes! Does your mama know you're at an event where the lowest ticket price is $35 looking like you just came from Sherwin Williams to pick out paint samples for your tool shed? Does she?

It all comes down to one plain and simple fact: Folks don't know how to act. And listen, my mama taught me how to act. What did your mama teach you? And she also taught me how to peel shrimps and calculate a discount during a clearance sale and other important and useful tricks, but you better believe that somewhere in all of that she was teaching me how to act like a goddamn civilized human being who might just, one day, be fit to be seen in a public location and be trusted not to act a total effing fool.

Once we were inside and the sight of blue jeans was so rampant that the very tears in the denim were burned into my retinas like a recurring nightmare of poor choices, I just could not take it anymore. So I began formulating a plan. A plan for my first book: Folks Don't Know How to Act.

Chapter One is without a doubt "Figure Out How to Put Some Clothes On." And while we were standing in line, waiting for David Sedaris to start signing books, I came up with about nine other chapter titles that are a little fuzzy for me now, but I know that somewhere in there were titles like "Figure Out How to Stop Running Your Mouth," "Yes M'am, No M'am," "Were You Raised in a Barn," "Get Your Elbows Off The Table" and "Do You Have a Mirror In Your Home (Because You Look Pregnant)." And also maybe, just for general rants, "Stop Acting A Fool," and "Have You Lost Your Mind?"

What crimes against humanity do you see committed in your daily life that prove to you that Folks Don't Know How to Act? I'm dead serious, y'all. Because if folks' mamas aren't going to teach them this stuff, then I will. The pen goes to paper on "Figure Out How to Put Some Clothes On" this week.


cheers,
elizabeth