There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

"There's no such thing as a free lunch." "Ya can't get something for nothing." "If it's too good to be true it probably is."

How many times have you heard one of those little ditties over your life time? Things like Murphy's Law and The Peter Principle. If they weren't true, no one would have ever coined the phrases, right? I've been here for over 56 years and I've learned, sometimes the hard way, that they are so, SO true. This was demonstrated to me tonight and I thought maybe I'd bore a few of you and tell you about it.

We're at the old homestead tonight watching the Phillies game on TV when Mrs. Mountain decides she'd like to partake of that wondrous summertime pleasure known as a Rita's Water Ice. By virtue of the fact that the aforementioned Mrs. has already changed out of her clothes into her robe and night wear you know who is detailed to venture forth and acquire said frozen delight. No problem, run down and jump in the F-150 and head up Academy Rd. Just a few blocks up the street my attention is drawn (as would be the attention of any red blooded heterosexual male) to the sight of a young, blonde haired woman. For purposes of full disclosure I will specify that my actual attention was focused on the pair of skin tight, leave very little to the imagination, eensy teeny weeny short shorts in a nearly neon shade of aqua, that this young woman was sporting, along with an abbreviated tank top as she and another woman (who I paid barely passing notice of due to her, ahem, rather large size and the baggy over sized clothing in which she was attired) walked up the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Thank the Great Spirit for the illumination afforded by street lights!

Now the entire observation from start to finish probably lasted less than maybe 5 seconds before I prudently redirected my attention to the traffic on the highway and soon arrived at the shopping center. Remembering I had forgotten to pick a few items up on an earlier trip to the store today, I ran into the Acme supermarket, grabbed the things I needed and then proceeded to the opposite end of the center to the Rita's store. I exited my truck, approached the crowd waiting for their turn in line and was immediately treated (YES, there IS a God!!!) to the sight of the same young woman, aqua shorts and all, standing right in front of me in the line no more than FIVE FEET in front of me, fully illuminated in the mercury vapor lamps that are a true gift from the heavens!

If I thought she looked good in partial light, from a moving vehicle, at least 200 feet away, imagine how good she looked standing right smack dab in front of me. I would guess she was most likely between 18 and maybe 21-22 years of age, tops. She had long, blonde hair pulled into a pony tail, already had the start of a great sun tan and was such a natural beauty of a young lady that she needed little or no make up to complement her gorgeous facial features and she had a pair of legs a lot of women would kill for, rock hard abs...oh what's the point? The more I go on the more you'll be convinced I'm some kind of rain coat wearing pervert, but come on folks, cut me some slack. We should all be free to appreciate the finer things in life and as attractive young women go, this one was "all that and a bag of chips." I stood behind her in the line, trying NOT to be blatantly obvious while I stared at that most perfect combination of legs and butt in those shorts and, as "luck" would have it they would be the next customers served before me at the window.

So what's this got to do with the whole free lunch thing? You may recall that I mentioned the hotty in the aqua shorts was in the company of another female. During the time spent in line I surmised that the other woman was most likely the blonde's mother, based on snippets of over heard conversation. A comparison of physical appearance, however, would NEVER give rise to a reasonable and prudent man's belief that there could possibly be any shared genes between the two. Where the young one was lithe and trim the other was probably 4 times her weight. Mom had curly ( a really bad, passed its expiration date perm) dark hair with a lot of gray. You may have heard of "getting smacked with the ugly stick?" Well, friends, this poor woman fell out of the ugly TREE and hit every branch on the way down! OK, William, knock it off! Appearances mean nothing, right? Beauty is only skin deep (but ugly goes all the way to the bone) STOP IT!!
OK, OK. If she was just fat and ugly it would be no problem, I'd just focus on the young good looking one. (Did I mention the skin tight, fabric so far up the crack of her butt that.....OK, never mind)
But, NOOOOOO...it wasn't going to work that way.

Once the pair got to the window "Mom", after standing in line for nearly 10 minutes, then thought it was NOW time to BEGIN to decide what she wanted. Apparently no thought was given to the subject during the previous wait. Now, she starts questioning blondie..."well what should I get, what do YOU think is good, what is that, what is this, what are those things over there, how do they make that, should I get ice cream or custard, water ice or yogurt, should I get a gelati, a "Misto", a shake, I just don't know what do you think?....and after a couple of minutes of all that, she then starts peppering the young woman behind the counter with all of the same questions and more and then has the server begin listing what seemed to be the contents of the entire store and demanded a recitation of the ENTIRE friggin' Rita's product line before, FINALLY, HALLELEUAH PRAISE THE LORD she made up her damned mind!

Had it not been for the fact that my attention had been diverted, uhhh, else where during this time I may have been a bit more aggravated, but hey, the scenery was good and I could hear the ball game on the radio, so no harm done. The Rita's girl is preparing and creating the wondrous treats that emanate from Rita's and the mixtures are presented to the customers and the amount due, a whopping Seven dollars and Sixty Three cents is announced and Mom reaches into her pocket, extracts a mixture of paper currency, a tissue or two, some coins, a pill of some sort and some pocket lint, leafs through all of this and presents to the waiting young woman behind the counter- A. Fucking. Credit. Card.
For a seven dollar, sixty three cent tab.
The girl takes the card, retreats to the nether regions of the store and comes back to announce: "Your card has been declined." For less than 8 bucks. Declined. For real? Seriously?
Does Mom produce the cash? Did you REALLY think it would be this easy? No. Mom comes up with yet another card and while presenting same announces, "I don't know if this one will go through but I'll hold my breath."
Again, the process is undertaken. Success! The card went through for the 7 bucks and change!
Now all she has to do is shift her frozen Rita's treat from her possession to blondie's so she can sign the 8 dollar credit slip and finally be on her way, granting me unfettered passage to the service window where I placed my order, with one final glance at blondie's PERFECT ass as she walked away.

For a few minutes after returning to my truck and heading back home with our Rita's treats I realized that for a few seconds of having the pleasure of admiring this young woman's physical attributes I paid a ridiculously high price in suffering through that obnoxious cow's disregard for the people standing in line behind her, and as much as I hate to admit it, NO couple minutes of ogling her ass was worth the torture endured by looking at, listening to, and standing behind this behemoth.

Of course ladies, you know, when I got home and related this little tale to Mrs. Mountain the first thing she said was, "that's what you get for being a pervert and staring at young girl's asses...serves you right, moron."

You can't get something for nothing, friends. There's no such thing as a free lunch!

If you got this far, I appreciate it. Thank you for reading.
That's the View From The Mountain.
I'll see ya next time!!

I hate driving

I haven't been here for a while...since like August of last year. I was raised being taught, "if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all." Lately I haven't been in a nice mood. No particular reason, really. Life, for me, is pretty good. I'm happily married, financially secure, more importantly, my financial future is secure and I've got a wonderful family including 4 grand kids that I adore, although I don't see them nearly as much as I'd like. So why don't I have anything nice to say?

I try and stay away from politics. I made the mistake of posting some opinions in the past and was instantly branded a racist, and my favorite label: a hater. The next person who tells me, "don't be a hater, man" is going to need to have some teeth replaced. I'm tired of victimism (I just coined that word - that's why spell check is telling me its bogus) excuses, syndromes, illnesses, diseases and all the other things that people (mostly lawyers) come up with to try and get people off the hook for doing bad things. That doesn't leave much to talk about. Too many people use up way too much time talking about sports. I'm not much of a sports fan in general other than Major League Baseball and I'll be the first to admit that I maintain not much more than a rudimentary level knowledge of the inner workings and finer points of the game. I truly enjoy a night at the ball park even though the cost is rapidly becoming prohibitive. Someone has to keep guys like Ryan Howard making 12 million dollars a year to play a kid's game and at the rate things are going its not going to be me much longer, lest I lose that future financial security. I'm NOT a pro football fan, considering most of the players in the NFL common thugs and criminals (see: Vick, Michael). Whooops. There I go with being a hater again. What's left to talk about?

Driving. We'll talk about driving. I HATE driving. Hate it. I'm a hater, man. I'm 56 years old and got my driver's license when I was 16. I've been driving 40 years. More importantly, for most of those 40 years I was employed in jobs where driving was one of, if not THE, primary item in the job description. I was a police officer for many of those years and upon retiring from active police service I began driving trucks. Big trucks, over the road some and locally, all day every day for the better part of about 35 years I drove some vehicle on some highway some where. Maybe when you're out there every day for at least 8 hours you just get used to things. You either don't notice or pay attention to the stupid, boneheaded, ignorant shit people do or you realize if you let everyone that does those things aggravate you you'd be aggravated all day long.

I guess being off the road and not required to spend as much time driving as I used to is having a negative effect on me because it seems I can't drive more than 10 minutes any more with out some idiot doing some stupid, ignorant, boneheaded shit and pissing me off. I realize and accept that most people who are out on the roads have a specific mission or destination and many of them may have a particular time frame in which to arrive at said location, but that's just no excuse for the rampant, blatant, dangerous stuff that people are doing out there every day and this is the point of this rant - I don't believe that many of them are actually late for something legitimately important or even necessary when they do these things. They do them because driving has become a sort of microcosm for the way we treat each other in general, every day life.

Case in point (and the impetus, I suppose, for sitting here pounding the keyboard): This afternoon while driving north on Frankford Ave. here in the City of Shitadelphia, I was in the left lane and a car began to overtake me on the right. Not being totally cognizant of exactly where on Frankford Ave. I was, I failed to comprehend that the vehicle overtaking me was doing so because he (it was a male driver) was about to run out of road. The two lanes we were on were about to narrow down to one. There was a large delivery truck in front of me that I was coming up on because of the truck's slower speed and just about the time that I actually took serious notice of the car in the right lane he got barely past me and suddenly squeezed over into the left lane, causing me to brake hard and take evasive action to keep from hitting him as he managed (somehow) to make it in between me and the truck in front of me. Why did he do this? Because he knew he was running out of lane and was not content to slow slightly and merge in behind me even though it was stupidly obvious that there were NO other vehicles behind me. He would not have to wait for a line of cars to get by. NO. It was more important to him to be FIRST. He HAD to get there before I did!

What's the big deal? Why am I pissed about this enough to be sitting here hoping someone will have hung in long enough to even get to this paragraph? Its because this shit happens constantly out there. There is no give and take. No consideration for other people, other vehicles on the road. No desire, on what seems to be more and more people's parts, to want to even make an attempt to maintain any semblance of decency. We all make mistakes. We can all be distracted while driving, miss a stop sign, not see a red light soon enough or any one of a thousand little honest mistakes, but observe, the next time you're on the road just how many people speed up to pass you and then jam the brakes because they're getting off at the exit right in front of them, how many have NO intent what so ever to actually obey a yield sign when entering a highway, how many see signs advising of a lane closure miles ahead and continue to ignore them until you actually approach the closure and then they force their way over in front of other cars. Its epidemic and its disgusting and its because so many of us have just become ignorant, self centered assholes with no regard for our fellow man and then we turn on Action News and shake our heads over the latest "road rage" story.

At the moment that idiot cut me off today I was pissed off enough to want to kick his ass. I guess he was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, and although I seriously wanted to get out when we both had to stop at the next red light (he got real friggin' far ahead of me, eh?) and drag him from the car and kick the shit out of him as payback for every other moron on the highway who ever did something really stupid in front of me, I didn't. I came home and got a serious case of keyboard rage. After every single one of his TV shows in which its revealed that some toothless, redneck hillbilly has discovered that her live in boyfriend/cousin is really a female who's sleeping with her sister AND her father, Jerry Springer signs off with this line: "Take care of yourselves...and each other."
We just don't do that on the roads much any more and people are dying because of it.

That's the View From The Mountain. If you read all the way to this point, you must really be bored. But I thank you.