According to my cell phone which reliably updates itself to the current timezone wherever I go, it was 12:38 when I started feeling pissed off. I know this for a fact because it was then that I overheard a group of inebriated 20-somethings recounting the number of drinks and their total tab as if to convince themselves (and nearby passengers) that their night was sufficiently pleasurable. At 12:42 I am incapable of interpreting any cadre of relatively well-dressed young women as anything other than a rehashing of some Sex and City episode. I couldn't place this particular scene unfolding in front of me in the embodiment of 3 dress-wearing, drunk, waddling women owing to the fact that I am fairly certain none of the plucky principles of that show had ever been body-checked over an escalator, as was vividly occurring in my mind. As I do in these times of estrangement, I try to remember all the good I bring to the world. In that vein I present:

An Abridged List of Some Things I Find Insincere Which I May Regret Saying In The Very Near Future

#5: Public displays of Anger - we get it, you're delicate and instead of finding an outlet for your angst / missing Netflix DVD's / Grey's Anatomy upset, you have to let some poor Asian Grandmother have it in line at your neighborhood Post Office. Let me share something with you: you can be shot. Any police officer can do it and I pay them for this - taser, pellet sized sand-bag, whatever. You're only ever this close to having someone totally misinterpret your grown-up fit-throwing for The Worst Case Scenario involving you alone in a late night convenience store check out line laying out an escape plan to Canada with about 5 cop cars outside. Cake-baking Christ, get a handle on things.

#4: Saying "I Feel You" - despite the immediate distrust I have for anyone who tells me they understand me after only a short time, I have always found this statement to be empty and vapid unless it is used to really connect with someone. Otherwise, it becomes a worthless pick-up prefix. You don't feel me anymore than I feel the inside of my eyelid and if you do empathize, you'll find clear way of letting me know, hopefully with tongue (chick) or beer (anything else).

#3: Talking To Thin Air As If Anyone Is Listening (also known as Narrating Your Own Life) - here's recipe for irritation: take your typical post-collegiate, pumped up with a youthful arrogance, equip with cell phone and surround with social friends who "support" her and see if a kind of irritating tendency to tell everyone what she's doing doesn't quickly surface. Seriously, I can overlook the first couple of times when you wake up in the morning and recount all the inane things you're going to do that day, but reading the cookbook out loud? Reminding yourself to call your sister through the living room wall? If a bookcase falls on an attention-seeking sycophant and no one is around to hear it, do her up-to-the-minute accounts of spinal injury make a noise?

#2: Breaking an interpersonal boundary then pretending you're sorry (and didn't know) - in theory you can do this as many times as you can count the number of people you currently hold as close friends. In reality, most people taste blood in the water and inform their friends of your retarded solipsism. How many times do you think you can jank your friends' cell phones and delete phone numbers of people you don't think they should be socializing with before you've "helped" them into hating you? This leads me to...

#1: "That's Just Who I Am" - I had a roommate freshman year in college from the booming metropolis of Fayetteville, NC. Things started off well but the night our cars were towed and he slammed his meat-hooks into the hood of my reclaimed sedan upon my return (to help him get his car), things took a turn for the primitive. As he explained later, that was "just who he was" which led me to think that he would just as soon break a chair over my head as pass the salt. Talk about a lazy substitution for any kind of accountability. And don't think this behavior is exclusive to meal-planners - it extends well into adulthood. When this miracle explanation is offered to me it is usually attached to a personal behavior on which it might not be so difficult to reflect and accept light criticism such as: hitting on your friend's boyfriend(s); being arrogant instead of plain old confused; needing overwhelming attention; removal of unsightly lip hair; constantly needing structure; singing falsetto on all songs, always. Consider the irony of the cripple who is beaten by his own crutch (figuratively, literally) and know that "the way you are" isn't the way you'll always be unless you make it so.