The Age of Rude and Stupid

We live in a society of sociopaths and incompetents. It's not a great combo.

Yesterday, we met both components within minutes of each other.

We were walking across a street controlled by traffic lights. A woman was turning left into our path. Not a teen-age screwball, not some hopped up gangsta. A 50-ish well groomed white matron in an expensive late model sedan. As we were about 3/4 of the way across the street and the woman showed now sign of slowing down, we held up our hands to indicate that it would be polite, judicious and the legal thing to do to stop and let pedestrians cross in a marked crosswalk.

But you can see the punchline coming.

Of, course, adopting her best icy stare, she drove around us.

The guy on the bicycle, who was stationed on the corner and observing all of this, said, "Do you believe that?

This morning, I read in the sports section about the final in the women's section of the Rogers Cup tennis tournament that took place yesterday in Toronto. (Of course, Henin won.) The recap reads, "They shouted during serves, used their flash to take pictures and failed to turn off their cell phones."

We live in a society over-run with adolescent sociopaths. Everything is me and if you're not in my movie, you don't really exist.

Now, the incompetents.

A few minutes after the traffic incident, we discovered a real estate Open House. The huge, old house has been completely re-furbished and now offered three apartments for sale. The Basement (!) is being offered for only $600,000. Someone will pay that to live in a basement.

Behind the old house is a new coach house, built to match the main building.

We went into the hallway and told the sales lady that we weren't going to walk through, but perhaps she could give us the specs sheet. She did. Asking $938,000. I asked how many bedrooms. Two upstairs.

"So, there is a bathroom upstairs and one down here on the main?"

This is the good part.

The sales lady sort of staggered backwards into the living room area, turning her neck one way and then the other, in some kind of mild panic.

"Uh, well, um, let's see..."

The, relieved she spotted something behind me.

"Oh! Yes, there's a powder room just behind you there."

I must have looked at her funny, because she immediately added, "Ha, I'm just getting my bearings here."

So, let me see if I understand this situation in all its glory.

Someone is selling a Million Dollar ticket item and doesn't have the good sense and basic sales skills to case the joint first and have a basic product knowledge of how many bathrooms there are, let alone the fine points of materials, construction, mechanics, maintenance and taxes???

Our second class country is rapidly becoming Third World.

As everyone is relentlessly obsessed with their text messaging and cell-phoning and emailing and DVD and plasma TV and all the other mindless, self-contained amusements, we are forgetting how to behave, how to care for one another and how to do our jobs.

Is it still safe to move to the far corner of the forest?