Idiot-syncrasies

It started at the gym, as so many of my observations of the human condition do. There’s a guy there who calls some guys “bro”, while he calls others “bra”. Either way, you can hear the awkward quotation marks. I’m still trying to decide how he chooses which honorific to use. I doubt he knows. Still, that’s where the title for this post came from.

Friday was a rare personal holiday. (For my lovely and much-appreciated foreign readers, don’t look at a calendar, it was only mine.) We went out to breakfast. The next table was filled with half a dozen entertainment-industry types, all about my age. I kept reminding myself that they are probably much better at what they do than I am at what I do, but that didn’t keep my eyes from rolling when they were loudly condescending to the very nice server. And the orders! Scrambled eggs, done “medium” – she said that three times, as if repetition would give it meaning. One guy ordered something that on the menu is a small paragraph of delicious sounding ingredients. Then, a la Jack Nicholson, he listed all the items he didn’t want. Why bother in the first place? Another sadly, earnestly, and at length, explained that he was using up all his calories for the whole day with this one meal. Talk about first world problems.

They were an L.A. cliché. Don’t tell me that clichés happen for a reason. I was born here. I know. That doesn’t make it less embarrassing, just like I was embarrassed by the 40ish woman crossing the street in front of Warner Brothers wearing a midriff top with jeggings. She didn’t have the posture or the attitude, let alone the figure, for either.

We all have our idiosyncrasies. Own them. Rejoice in them. Be proud of them. But never forget that they are idiosyncrasies and other people aren’t obligated to respect or honor them, because they won’t.