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By Jack Godbey

Columnist

I am a student of human behavior. I enjoy sitting in a busy environment and watching people pass and observing their behavior. An afternoon at WalMart is fascinating for this. So many times, I’ve thought to myself, no way that person went out like that. Do they even own a full-length mirror? Which reminds me that there are some things that people do that I just can’t seem to understand.

I was at a restaurant the other day and the hostess seated me beside some folks that had a newborn baby screaming louder than a preacher during summer revival while the mother watched videos on her phone with the volume turned up so loud you could have heard it outside in the parking lot. Then when my waitress came, she was wearing more makeup than the Joker and was wearing so much perfume it reminded me of the time I varnished my deck. Maybe I should just get that hamburger to go. I just don’t understand it.

I decided to just go home and take a nap.  I mean a serious nap where you wake up and think you missed the school bus until you realize it’s Sunday and you’re 50 years old.

I went for a drive in the country and found that I had become lost. I stopped to ask a farmer for directions. He walked up to my vehicle as he spit tobacco juice on the ground and said, “Yea, just go a piece down the road and turn by old man McAfee’s store. Go a bit until you get to the spot where the concrete truck turned over ten years ago and turn left and it’s right there beside the widow Patterson’s field”. Is it possible to give that to me again in English? I decided to turn on my GPS and all it said was go north. I’m sorry but I have no idea which way north is from here. I seemed to have forgotten my compass at home. I just don’t understand it.

Sometimes I’ll give in to my fast-food desires and all I want is to enjoy my Big Mac free from human interaction. I’ll drive to a parking spot so far out that I think no one will ever find me and every single time, someone will pull into the spot next to me. There are 10,000 spots to choose from and you have to come over and park next to me? I just don’t understand it.

Have you ever had the stress of handing someone your phone to look at a picture only to have them start swiping through all your pictures?  If you come across those pictures I took at the nude beach don’t blame me if you go blind. I just don’t understand it.

I bought a new microwave recently and the thing has more buttons than a NASA control panel. I don’t want to sign up for astronaut training, all I want to do is pop my popcorn. I’m pushing buttons everywhere but still no popcorn. Finally, my wife tells me the thing is set on defrost. I didn’t even know the oven had a defrost button. Can anyone tell me where to buy a microwave for stupid people? I just don’t understand it.

Sometimes people say things I don’t understand. When someone gets upset, they say, “Just Calm Down”. Has anyone in the history of time ever calmed down because someone said, calm down? An associate and I had an argument and he said, “Sorry you feel that way”. I felt like saying, “Sorry you got your teeth knocked out”. I just don’t understand it.