Christine the Curmudgeon

Christine the Curmudgeon posted before about annoying old biddies on the Boston Express Bus.  But there is another rant, this one about The Toddler Who Would Not Shut Up.

This was last week, as well, I forget if it was Tuesday or Thursday, but that’s no big deal.  I got in the queue for the bus as usual, so I could get my seat with the power outlet.  I was distressed a bit to see some rather annoying young children in the line in front of me.  But the good thing abut having them in FRONT of me in the queue was that they’d be seated first, and I could try to not sit near them, if such a seat was available with a power outlet, that is.

But then the most annoying kid of the bunch, a little boy who looked to be about 3-4 years old, decided that he had to pee.  He was there with his mother and his grandmother, so Grandma volunteered to take him to the bathroom.  Whike they were gone, the bus started boarding.

I was able to get on and get a power outlet seat far away enough from the other people with little kids.  But then, who comes and sits RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, but Annoying Kid, Grandma, and Mom.  The adults took turns having the kid on their laps, otherwise, they’d not be able to all sit together.

This kid was annoying because HE WOULD NOT SHUT UP the whole time!  I had my iPod with me, but even that couldn’t drown out the high-pitched kid babble.  Fortunately, they got off in Salem, so I got to ride the rest of the way to Manchester in peace.

This is unfair.  I mean, Boston Express Bus has some strict rules about noise.  We are told at the beginning of each and every trip that we are to turn off our cell phones, or at least set them to vibrate.  Talking on the phone on the bus is not allowed, unless the bus is running late, and you need to call someone on the other end to let them know.  Even then, you are expected to keep it brief.  Texting is okay, though.

Also, they tell passengers that if they are using an iPod or other device that has sound, they should make sure that the volume is not turned up high enough so that everyone on the bus can hear out out of their earbuds.  These rules are enforced; once I saw a driver threaten to throw this guy off the bus because he refused to stop talking on his cell phone, despite repeated warnings.

So, if it’s a quiet ride they want for the passengers, then why does this kid get a free pass?  Because he’s a KID?  WHY couldn’t Mom and Grandma make him shut up?  Indoor voice, anyone?  But no, this kid was so damned loud, that my iPod couldn’t block him out.  Well, it would have, if I’d turned the volume up louder, but that would have broken one of the rules of the bus.

Even if I wanted to give up my power outlet seat to get away, I couldn’t have, as the bus was full.  And besides, the kid was so loud that I would have heard him no matter where I was sitting.

I’m sorry, but that kid was a zillion times more annoying than anyone’s cell phone conversation.  Fortunately, the passengers on the Boston Express Bus are mostly commuters who live in New Hamster and work in Boston, and want to avoid the shitty drive on I-93.  Not too many people with kids at all.  I’m not saying that kids should not be allowed on these buses, I’m just saying that the same standard of QUIET should apply to them, as it does for everyone else.

Today, Christine the Curmudgeon is going to rant about people who do not properly plan ahead – specifically large groups of people.

Several years ago, Mr. Curmudgeon and I dined at a restaurant in Portsmouth, NH called The Stockpot.  It is no longer there…too bad, it was a pretty good place.  Anyhoo, it was kind of a small place, at least the one non-smoking room was (at the time, smoking was still permitted in NH bars and restaurants).

We were there on a Saturday night in the summer, a busy time in Portsmouth and other seacoast towns.  Since it was just the two of us, we were able to walk into The Stockpot and get a table right away.

As we were sitting there, drinking our beers and enjoying our dinner, this group of nine people walked in.  The hostess told them that she could not seat them all together at the time, and that they’d have to wait.  The leader of the group started screaming at the poor hostess, as if this were somehow her fault.  But there was nothing she could have done, she did her best to calm this person down.  They left for a while, but then came back, probably because they realized that there was nit a single restaurant in all of downtown Portsmouth that could seat a group of nine people together on a Saturday night.  In the middle of the summer.  With no advance notice.  They were still waiting when we left, and they were loudly bitching and moaning about it all as we walked past them.

I was reminded of this incident by one that happened more recently.  I’ve been becoming a regular on the 3PM Boston Express Bus from Boston’s South Station to Manchester, NH, at least once a week.  This is because we go to a lot of New Hampshire Fisher Cats games, and for the weeknight games, it is easier if I go up on the bus, and Mr. Curmudgeon meets me at the stadium after he gets sprung from work.  His office is about halfway up I-93 between our house and the ballpark, so it makes no sense for him to have to drive home, get me, and them backtrack north again.  We’ll have season tickets for next year, so I’ll be using Boston Express Bus all the more; I hope they come out with monthly passes by then!

Anyhoo, these buses come equipped with free WiFi, as well as electrical outlets at some of the seats.  These are clearly marked, but you need to get in the queue for the bus early so you can get on sooner and snag one of these seats, if you need one.  Since I never go anywhere without my cell phone, Amazon Kindle, and iPod (and sometimes I bring my netbook if I need to do some work), I always get there early enough to get an outlet.  I always seem to have SOMETHING that needs to be charged up!

So I was on the 3PM to Manchester last Friday, sitting in my seat with the power outlet, my phone happily charging away.  At exactly 2:58, this large group of older ladies got on the bus, and once they saw that the bus was nearly full and that there was no way they could all sit together, they started bitching and moaning loudly about this.

Some people actually got up and moved so at least some of them could sit together.  I was not among them.  I was the one who planned ahead because I wanted access to a power outlet; although I do charge things up at home, using mobile web on a phone sucks up a lot of juice.  But that’s not the point – the point is that I knew what I had to do to get a power outlet seat, and I made sure to get there in time to board the bus and get one.  It’s not my problem that this bunch of old biddies didn’t plan ahead to get to the station early enough to be the first to board and get their choice of seats!  This is NOT the same thing as refusing to give an elderly person a seat on an MBTA bus or train, now that I would do.  The Boston Express Bus only sells as many tickets as there are seats, so nobody has to stand.  This was just a case where the old bats all wanted to sit together, and it wasn’t going to happen.

One of the old biddies sat next to me, but I put my iPod earphones in and ignored her as she glared at me.

Next time, get there earlier!  Sheesh!  If I ever act like this when I become an old bat, somebody please shoot me!

So Christine the Curmudgeon and the Mister went to Kappy’s.  The Hugh Jass location you see right here.

I was looking for a couple of beers in particular, neither of which they had, but I hung around the better beer section looking to see what else they had.  They actually had a decent selection, considering that Kappy’s mostly caters to the Bud/Miller/Coors crowd.

Somewhere along the way, Mr, Curmudgeon lost himself.  As in, he wandered off as I was looking at the beer, and when he tried to look for me, he could not find me.  So he went out to the car.  Which was why I could not find HIM anywhere.  But I didn’t know that he’d left the store until later.

I had a cart containing a case of Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale, and a six-pack of Dale’s Pale Ale from Oskar Blues.  I decided to just pay for it and put it in the car, and then try to find my dopey husband.

And that’s when I saw he went out to the car.  “I couldn’t FIIIIND you”, he whined.  Where, where the HELL did he think I was, other than looking at the GOOD beer section?  Off looking at Outer Banks homes?  Sheesh!

For someone who is a member of Mensa, sometimes my husband can be a serious doofus.

Such as the people who were sitting in our row last night at the New Hampshire Fisher Cats game.  Christine the Curmudgeon was getting seriously irritated by this one kid who was being inconsiderate.

We were in our usual seats, on the end of a row.  The only other people in the row were a couple with one kid, a boy who looked to be about 8-9 years old.  They were all the way on the other end, at the aisle seats. As we arrived at our seats, we had to wait for the kid to get out, he walked all the way down the row, rather than exiting at the end where he was sitting.

This would have been okay if we were not there.  But then the same kid came back, entering through OUR side and making us get up so he could get by.  The kid got up and down several times, each time exiting and entering through our end, unnecessarily disrupting us.  There were STILL no other people seated in the row at the time.

I finally got sick of it, and the next time the kid made us get up to get past us, I politely pointed out to him that he should go out at the other end of the row, because it was closer to the aisle.  To his credit, he actually felt bad for endlessly disturbing us, but said he’d go in and out at his end from now on.

Then it occurred to us that perhaps HIS PARENTS made him go in and out the way he was, because maybe THEY couldn’t be arsed to keep getting up to let him out.  I looked over at them, the father did kind of look like a jerk.  I don’t know why, he just did to me.

I kept looking over to see if the kid had returned to his seat, and how the parents reacted when he made them move so he could take his seat.  I wondered if they’d punish him or something.  The boy was gone for a long, long time, maybe he was afraid to go back.

He finally did return, the parents had to get up to let him by.  Fortunately, he wasn’t yelled at, at least not loud enough for us to hear.  But he did not get up from his seat again for the rest of the game.  I was hoping that they don’t punish the kid when they got home, for daring to disturb them to get up and down, to maybe throw him into one of those outdoor fireplaces or something. Or likely, just beat him for daring to inconvenience them.  If this were the case, why didn’t they just let him have the end seat?  Then he’d not be making anyone get up.

I worried a bit that one of both of the parents might come over and give us a hard time for daring to speak to their kid.  Fortunately, they did not.

The parents ended up having to get up to let people in and out anyway, because other people had arrived to sit in that row.  Just as we did, when people who were sitting closer to our end arrived.

To me, proper etiquette here is to exit your row on the side that is closest.   But if  no one had ever showed up in our row, and it was just up and the family on the other end, AND if the kid continued to enter and exit on our end, I’d have been SO tempted to get up and exit and enter through THEIR end several times, just so that they could see what it was like for us.  Mr. C always sits on the end, I sit in the second seat, so he has to move when I have to get up and pee or get more beer or whatever.  Why should I make HIM move, when I can make others move instead?

I thought about doing it once or twice just to get the message across, but I’m better than that.

Scene from the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" segment of "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life"

Christine the Curmudgeon just read this article: Jobless Couple Expecting 12th Child, and does NOT approve.  This is absolutely appalling!  They CHOSE to have so many kids, why should the fine taxpaying folks across the pond be forced to finance this life CHOICE?

And YES, it IS A CHOICE!  This is the 21st century; there are plenty of effective ways to prevent pregnancy.  They have free health care over in the U.K.; so surely birth control pills are paid for.  And so would permanent sterilization, wouldn’t it?  If this couple were truly serious about not wanting more kids, they’d have gone and had it done – to both of them, just to make extra sure.

I don’t buy for one second that this latest pregnancy was an accident.  As I said above, it could easily have been prevented.  Why bother looking for a job, when they can just go on the dole (slang term for “welfare” in  the U.K.), AND get moved into a bigger house every time they outgrow the last one?  And this is all on the taxpayers’ dime.  It is grossly unfair that most people have to work hard to provide for themselves and their families, while people like this couple are rewarded for continuing to crank ‘em out every year.  It’s even more irritating when I see people on welfare dressed in designer rocawear and such.  I see them all the time at the supermarket, paying with WIC vouchers and food stamp cards, with perfectly done hair and nails, lots of gold jewelry and designer clothes, and yapping away on an expensive iPhone.

There are some people out there who think that having kids should be some sort of a basic right.  I disagree.  It’s a life choice, just like choosing to buy a Mercedes-Benz or a fancy boat, or going on a year-long world tour.  If you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t do it.  If you want kids, first make sure you have a reasonable amount of money with which to support them, and then only have as many as you can afford.  I’m not saying you have to be rich to have kids; they don’t need those designer clothes and fancy electronics to survive.  But at least try to have enough money for basic necessities first; don’t get pregnant with the full intention of living off the taxpayers’ dime.  I mean, if I wanted a boat or a Mercedes, the taxpayers won’t buy me one, so I do without those things.  We do need to have a car, but we have a Ford Focus because that is something we can easily afford.  A Mercedes is NOT a car that we can easily afford, so we didn’t choose to buy one.

You may have heard of Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar, who have 19 kids and say that they are willing to have more.  They are very religious people who practice something called Quiverfull; which means that you agree to have as many babies as God sends you.  In the case of the Duggars, they are supporting themselves, they are not on welfare or any other form of public assistance.  I think Jim Bob has some sort of a motivational speaking business, plus they are making money from their reality show, 19 Kids & Counting.  I may not personally agree with the idea of having that many kids, but as long as they can afford to support them, and are not raising them to be useless teen thugs, then it is within their rights to do so.

But Gary Bateman and Joanne Sheppard, the couple in the U.K. with 11 kids, another on the way, and no jobs, don’t even have a valid religious excuse.  It appears that they are not married; the same religions that are against birth control and abortion are also against people having sex without being married to each other.  So I hope they don’t try to haul out the “it’s against my religion” thing should someone suggest tubal ligation and/or vasectomy for them.

The system definitely needs to be reformed.  Public assistance should be for people who are truly in need, for people who fell upon hard times through no fault of their own.  It should be for people who lose their jobs, something which we hear a lot about these days, due to the sucky economy.  It should also be for people who become disabled and cannot work.  These people have a legitimate need for money to pay their bills and take care of any kids they have that are already here.  It should NOT be financing people’s expensive life choices, be it designer clothes, expensive cell phones, or for making more babies.