Posted on: Monday, October 18, 2004

ABOUT MEN

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

When did men get so angry? For that matter, when did I get so angry?

In my family, men have always been the laid-back ones. I come from a long line of men content with a football game, a couch and a bottle of beer. We trudge off to work, pay our taxes and enjoy a good backyard barbecue.

Isn't that all there really is to worry about?

Not judging by what I hear on radio, on my answering machine and in the locker room. Men are amped up and ticked off by just about everything. We've become a bunch of mean-spirited jerks, just like some women always said we were.

Until recently, I wouldn't have counted myself in those ranks. If there were things that bothered me, well ... let's just say that growing up in New Jersey, long before I ever heard the word bumbye — no need for hurryin'/no need for worryin' — I was already living the lifestyle.

Now that I think of it, there were a couple of teachers in high school who recognized the mañana gene in me and swore it was going to be my downfall.

I knew better. It was a ticket to a long, happy life. For years I watched my father, who worked the swing shift in an elevator factory, find his inner peace with nothing more than an early edition of a New York newspaper and a late-night can of Pabst. If others wanted to complain all the time, it was all right with him — and me. That, too, is part of the laissez-faire life.

So it comes as something of a surprise that after more than 50 years of live and let live, I find myself getting angry more and more often.

Naturally, I've got a list:

• People who go to baseball games with a cell phone so that someone can call them when they are on camera and get them to wave.

• People who use their cell phones on airplanes and shout, "Guess where I am?"

• George W. Bush.

• People with those little earpiece cell phones who talk into a wire, making you think they are either crazy or in the Secret Service.

• People who say, "Wait, I'm losing you. Call me on my land line."

And that's just for starters.

I'm mad these days about the lack of taste in tomatoes, the cost of healthcare, the way the Cubs ended the season, potholes, the quality of public education in America, Enron, the way the Bears started the season, Pumpkin Beer, faux flowers, cell phones, and ...

Wait, I'm starting to repeat myself. For that matter, I can't believe I'm complaining about being angry, either. I should just accept my anger and live with it. As someone on "Monty Python" once said: "I think all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told they're sick and tired of being sick and tired. I know I'm certainly not."

There, that helps.

Nothing like a little absurdity to chase away a bad temper. Now nothing's going to bother me.

Except George W. Bush.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.