Hmmmmmm . . .

Have you ever encountered a person or group of people who cause you to tilt your head to the side and think “hmmmmmmm . . .”?  Whether it’s because the person is interesting, mysterious, or completely absurd, s/he just makes you think.  This head tilting happens a lot in my world.  I love observing people, and I’ve reached one important conclusion: most people are completely insane.  Usually, I embrace this insanity because what is normal to me isn’t normal to some one else, and that is what makes us individuals.  More importantly, that insanity is what makes my observing all of you so entertaining.  But, occasionally I don’t embrace the insanity.  Sometimes it makes me pause a few seconds longer, and instead of “hmmmm,” I think “huh?” 

For example, last night hubby and I went to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks get their usual beating (which just made me say ughhhhhhhh, literally, at the end of the game).  Of course, when we arrived, people were in our seats; people always are in our seats.  We asked them to move down, and they kindly obliged.  But, as they moved down, we noticed them picking up numerous bags filled with food and who knows what else, along with tons of coats and other personal items.  “Strange” I thought, as I sat down with my California roll and got ready to watch the Knicks miss every three-pointer they shot (this is not an exaggeration).  Our new friends decided it would be a good idea to stack up all of their personal items on the chair next to me, along with a few other chairs in the row, and then to sit in the middle of their personal items.

I was at the game to have fun, so I didn’t want the fact that a mountain of some one else’s stuff was knocking into me repeatedly bother me.  I also tried to ignore the fact that they had hijacked several chairs for their personal items while the rest of us crammed ourselves and our stuff into one seat (just saying).  But, then I realized these people were part of a larger group, a gentleman and three children sitting in front of us. 

Kids are great – I like to play with them until they start screaming and crying and then go home to my cat – so I had no problem with kids being in front of us.  Except, when kids sit in front of strangers and not in front of or next to their parents, kids are not being watched by their parents, which results in kids standing up on their seats, kids tilting their heads back repeatedly so their hair falls in your food container, kids throwing food at each other, and kids scratching and hitting your legs and not apologizing.  But, what are you gonna do, throw down with a 7-year-old (okay fine – I considered it)?

So, I figured this group was a bunch of tourists who had a lot of crap, wanted to spread out, and generally were inconsiderate of everyone around them – I accepted it and turned my attention to the game.  But, I couldn’t because slowly the group started to get bigger.  One of the gentlemen had left the seats for awhile, and he returned with two kids.  “Wow – that’s a lot of kids” I thought. “Where have they been this entire time.”  Five minutes later TWO more kids arrived with another woman.  But, there’s no more room because the Duggar wannabees and their bags of personal items were crowding the entire section.  Not a problem for them though because they stacked the children on top of each other in front of us.  Yes kids, please sit on each other’s laps in front of the two strangers; we would never think of inconveniencing our personal items and putting them on the ground so that you can sit in a chair.  Nor would we consider inconveniencing ourselves and stacking you up in front of us.

Here’s the thing.  The fact that the personal items were on several chairs wasn’t a big deal, and the fact that the kids were being annoying kids wasn’t surprising or ludicrous to me.  The real clincher was that I knew, through my own secret detective ways and the fact that I saw one of the kids holding up tickets for a completely different section much higher up, that these seats didn’t belong to this group.  These were nice seats.  And, I could barely focus on the game in these nice seats because of the raucous surrounding me and the feeling that I was in a clown car with a bunch of stacked up kids and their coats.

Hubby and I could have upset this group’s evening by telling an usher that these seats didn’t belong to them or by confronting the parents and telling them to put leashes on their rugrats.  But, what was the point?  They were clearly clueless; if you get to the point of making me go “huh?” I really just prefer to ignore you.  But, I also like to say a few words of displeasure (all clean) to my hubby before I ignore you, and if you happen to hear those words, that is just fine with me. 

I guess the mommy heard the words because at some point in the game she started crying, and the gang of adults were whispering and gesturing towards hubby and me. So we figured that she was upset by my 2 minute dialogue of annoyance.  I don’t want to make anyone cry; it makes me sad to hurt people’s feelings.  But, she obviously didn’t feel bad enough to unstack the kids or stop them from throwing food or standing on their chairs or throwing their coats on me. 

Hey, kids are nuts and they have a lot of stuff!  I get it, and I totally understand that.  You can’t always control kids.  But, if you’re going to bring them to a section you don’t belong in, hijack the section, and not even sit next to the kids and try to control them, then don’t start crying when people get annoyed.  And honestly, I was annoyed for 2 minutes and then I watched the game, so the crying seemed a little dramatic (maybe she just had some onions in her 20 bags of groceries and it had nothing to do with me).