30 Minutes or Less

So I'm driving home the other day when suddenly there’s pizza delivery guy tailgating me.  Tailgating me in a completely over-the-top, practical-joke-level way. Since we're driving in my neighborhood, which is an upstanding residential area, and being a peacemaker I pull over to let him go by. When given the option to pass me like a gentleman, he chooses instead to gun it around me.

And again, this is a neighborhood, an area with sidewalks, children, strollers, and free-range kittens. Being a pillar of the community and not wanting to see my neighborhood's roadways ravaged by a pepperoni-scented maniac, I follow him to where he is making his delivery. I calmly exit my vehicle and rationally explain to him the ways in which his driving affects the safety of those around him.

He disagrees with my assessment and scrambles away to make his delivery. But I know I must unhold the integrity of my community's infrastructure. So, I steal the keys from his car and relocate them into the nearby bushes.

Although there was a mild traffic disturbance caused by the tow truck that came to collect his vehicle the following day, a community had been saved.

...especially this guy

One theory why it's tough for ladies this area to date is that the competitive job market, fast pace, and urban culture of the DC Metro Area not only attracts but also facilitates a certain type of male personality that is highly egotistical and self-absorbed.

Now, I'd hate for these city boys to get all the credit...

When I lived in North Carolina, I dated a fellow named John. And while, it didn't turn my stomach to look at him, I wasn't exactly high-fiving anyone after each date with him.

But, strangely, John was completely and utterly convinced that he was strikingly and painfully attractive he was. Certainly vanity is never a sought after trait, but most women will forgive this characteristic for a man whose vanity is well-earned. Brad Pitt, for example, could've written his graduate thesis about his own gorgeousness without complaint. 

This wasn't the case with John. But he would talk endlessly about his superior visage. At first, it was simply strange, was he being sarcastic?

Models, he claimed, had told him he was beautiful.

The notion that at any given time hoards of models are roaming the countryside distributing over-the-top compliments to average-looking men aside, when the following incident occurred that I realized I was dealing with more than just the symptoms of early onset dementia.

One night while out to dinner, John and I happened to run into a co-worker of mine dining with his wife.

The following day, John asked me,
Really, honestly, asked me,
Asked me without an ounce of irony or humor,
Asked me in a way that was so genuine and sincere that it continues to befuddle not only myself, but every person with whom I have shared this story since,
Asked me if the next day at work my coworker had told me how attractive he thought John was.

You're probably confused. I'll clarify: John wanted to know if my male, married, co-worker had taken me aside at work, not to discuss a new movie coming out or what we were doing for lunch, and in lieu of conducting our professional responsibilities, but for only the exclusive and specific purpose of telling me that he thought John was good-looking.

My confusion was so absolute, that it may well have been the most confounded anyone has ever been about anything that has ever happened, ever.

Cavemen seeing fire for the very first time could not have been more baffled than I was at that moment. I was positively bewildered—and at that point growing frightened—by the magnitude of the ego I was dealing with. It was like realizing that the annoying ant problem I had in my apartment weren't ants at all but actually post apocalyptic fire-breathing dragons.

Sh*t my attorneys say (and do)

I've been working with attorneys for six years now and like rhetoricians, two-year olds, and drunks, they say the darnedest things.  

...because these are the people I know

Like many women in the city, every day I face the disheartening realization that for every fresh-faced, career-driven, put-together, on-the-ball, college-educated, kept-it-tight, twenty-something-year-old one of us in this city, there are about ninety million (I’m confidant this is an exact statistic here) knuckle-dragging, chin-missing, mouth-breathing, hairline-receding, beer-gut swinging, middle-managing, men-boys trying to pass as the datable population of DC.