The Yakkers, and My Place In Their World

You know you've seen these people before:

On the train, on the bus, sitting in front of you at the movies - people who just can't seem to shut their yaps. They're yapping about this, they're flapping about that, braying away louder than a fog horn. And the garbage flying out of their mouths is flat-out unbelievable. They're bragging about the their exclusive party, gushing over a movie you honestly though was terrible, or describing in excruciating detail their recent colonoscopy (I was once in line at a 7-11 when someone actually started talking about this. Needless to say I left my slurpy behind).

The thing is...and this is one of my deep, personal phobias...I know I've been that person. In the restaurant, at the comic-book store, waiting in line for a hot-dog in the park - it has been my inane babbling, not someone else's, that has poisoned the ears of countless people. Mercifully, I will never meet these people. But that does not make it okay! How many times have I heard myself say something and know, in the pit of my stomach, that just at that moment I definitely sounded like a complete idiot, enough of an idiot that my idiocy itself would be grounds for moral offense, that in this case a punch in the nose would be justified, possibly even welcomed. I suppose this is inevitable. I talk a lot, more than most people. Out of all the jokes I crack and statements I proclaim, there are bound to be some stinkers. It's simple probabilities, really. But the fact of this haunts me, and as much as I try to ignore it, it looms, inescapable, like death. Some day, I am going to die. And before that happens, I'm going to prove myself a serious ass.

Okay, I can't end this post on such a downer. Here is another drawing, that does not provoke such feelings of self-doubt. Ah, uplift!