Have an Animated Day

You know how there are some people who draw bad luck to them like magnets? It hovers like the rain cloud over Charlie Brown. I’ve always believed there are some people who have drama - lots of it - in their lives, and there are those who don’t. I suspect, deep in their subconscious, drama people enjoy getting snippy, raising their voices, having high blood pressure, getting red-faced, and, most of all, having a story to tell everyone later. As in, “Oh my God, you will NEVER believe what happened to me today….”

I steer away from this tendency. I much prefer to get along with customer service people. I like all my transactions to happen quickly and easily so that I can get on to the next quick and easy part of my day. On those occasions when things go awry or someone is driving me nuts, I soothe myself by thinking about what kind of coffee I’d like to have later. All my tension vanishes like a snowman enveloped in flames!

This morning at the Passport Agency I was at the window with the nice lady who was helping me. I had all my documents. She gently made fun of my former last name, Schmugelgugski, and we laughed.

The woman next to me with long, white blond hair was having a harder time. Side note: Ladies, I’m no hairdresser, but I know enough to inform you that if you’re going to peroxide your hair at home you are also supposed to dye it a particular shade of blond. Get it? The bleach takes all the pigment out, and you add some pretty blond color on top of it. Otherwise you just look trashy.

Anyway, this woman was bitching at the clerk about how she was flying on Sunday and needed her passport RIGHT NOW. She had been calling every day and it should be READY! And she didn’t want to come back on Friday because she has to WORK then! I wanted to pat her arm and tell her to get it together and be nice or she would accomplish nothing, but I couldn’t tell where her arm was, what with it blending in with her albino hair.

Most of all, the woman insisted she should not have to come back because she made an animated appointment for today, just like she was supposed to. That’s right, animated. I wonder how the animated appointments are made? Do you call Pixar? Or Hanna-Barbera? Or the Claymation Rudolph the Reindeer? Only the blond lady knows.