As the holidays involve so much contact with family and friends, Poppy enjoys noticing and, let’s face it — cataloging for the benefit of this column — a few of the bizarre behaviors we all share but rarely note. So, grab your leftover holiday cookies (because your diet resolutions can wait), and let’s visit a few of the amusing eccentricities that make all that family holiday time worth it.
AND YOU WOULD BE… I see this all the time in life and movies, but how many times have you called someone and said or left a message saying, “Hey, it’s me,” as if every one of us is Morgan Freeman to our friends and family on the phone? I suppose it’s helpful that our phones have caller ID so we already know who “me” is in case we want to tap the “Send to Voicemail” button, so that’s good.
But then, the call goes to voicemail and the caller doubles down with a superfluous, “Call me back.” That’s a bit like writing a letter telling me you’re going to send me an email. Of course I’m going to call you back. Heck, sometimes I even call strangers back because I can’t leave a “missed call” just hanging out there.
On the off chance the call connects, and I have a real conversation with a human, there are other vague phone etiquettes like saying, “Well, I’ll let you go,” when what I really mean is, “Please hang up now, I’m done talking to you.”
BLESSED SNEEZES… Why do we still say “bless you” when someone sneezes? I realize it’s classic etiquette to wish someone good health but in the post-COVID world, it’s more of a knee-jerk “Keep your germ cannon to yourself, dude!”
Seriously, it’s a cozy Christmas evening, or perhaps an intensely silent church service. A sneeze dramatically shatters the silence and the eight “bless you’s” that immediately follow — sometimes from multiple strangers — create a brief and shared acknowledgment of our collective nasal humanity. But then the sneezes keep coming and the social contract gets a bit awkward. By the third sneeze, are we really supposed to keep saying it or just tell the sneezer to get his life together?
URBAN SHOWDOWNS… Few things are as charged with silent drama as the parking lot standoff, particularly for holiday shopping.
It’s a weekend, and I am circling the lot like SEAL, eyes peeled for that elusive empty spot. Why I spend more time looking than it would have taken to simiply walk from a more distant area of the lot I don’t know. I spot someone with keys in hand so I flip the blinker, the universal sign of claim, and enter stealth mode. But nay, from the other direction, another eagle-eyed shopper does the same. My knuckles tighten on the steering wheel, anticipating my rightful claim with the vim and vigor of a Karen in a coffee shop.
It’s a competition as old as the shopping mall itself and it’s not even about parking. It’s about competition, patience, and sometimes the pure, unadulterated desperation of finding a spot less than three light years from the store entrance.
As the original car pulls out, the slow-motion race to utilize the heft and bulk of my — yes, Poppy drives one — minivan to get into the gap ensues and the test of Karens begins. Depending on my mood, I may eventually give the other driver a courteous nod, or I may fiddle with my phone to look convincingly like I didn’t see the other car as I zip into the spot.
Yes, sometimes I have the patience of a saint, waving others ahead with a beatific smile. Other times, I’m in the mood to be a road warrior with my mom-chariot in the gladiatorial Walmart arena and it’s not nice to mess with my asphalt territory.
RESOLUTIONS… Maybe this year I will resolve not to be a road warrior. Then again, that too might fall in with many of my previous and grand declarations that a flip of the calendar would magically bestow upon me the discipline of a monk and the energy of a toddler. I might want to eat kale, join a gym, and save money, but right now all I really care about is making sure no one tells me who died on Yellowstone before I can binge-watch it on a second-tier streaming service I already pay for.