“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.”--Oscar Wilde Perhaps my problem is that I am not enough of a gentleman. Hurting someone's feelings is something I try never to do intentionally. My general insensitivity causes me enough grief without my purposefully piling on. Take this guy Jim I met at Starbucks. Jim is not a guy I want to have as a friend, but unfortunately for me the feeling doe not seem to be mutual. As expected, Monday morning I received a call from the hospital asking me to be there at ten sharp, to pick Jim up from his surgery. I was dreading the moment, but also looking forward to the possibility of bringing an end to our acquaintance. My plan was to pick him up and take him home and then not have to deal with him any more. Jim was full of interesting ideas about how to repay me for my kindness toward him. He wanted to take me and the lovely Mrs. Sneed out for dinner or me out to lunch. I did my best to decline all his invitations, using all the excuses at my disposal. We went into extra innings in the game of verbal dodgeball because I had to also take him to the pharmacy to pick up his pain meds. This gave up another thirty minutes in which to lung and parry. I ultimately managed to get him home and out of my car and then I beat feet. Stage two of my plan involved giving up my daily trip to Starbucks for awhile, hoping to avoid the guy. For four days it seemed that my plan was working. Unfortunately, Jim has my cell number from the hospital business and he called this morning to say he hadn't seen me at Starbucks lately. I gave him the bum's rush on the call and hope that will discourage him. I'm just no good at this sort of thing. After avoidance, I don't have any good strategies. Perhaps serial curtness will bear some fruit. On a lighter note, here is another fascinating story from the hardware store. A very nice woman came into the store today with a large globe type light bulb, still in the box. It was a brand we don't sell. She told me that she bought the bulb at Home Depot and when she put it into the fixture and turned on the switch, it blew up. I showed her what we had in the way of similar products and she settled on a GE bulb, for $6.99. She feigned horror at the $6.99 price for the bulb, obviously kidding. She remarked that she only paid $3.99 at Home Depot for the dead bulb. I explained to her that we only charge $2.50 for bulbs that don't work, so her's wasn't that good a deal. I think she took the point. Lastly, the lovely Mrs. Sneed and I will be off to San Diego this weekend for our traditional Labor Day retreat. Blogging may be sporadic through Tuesday. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky