I was in a local store recently, a nice gentleman asked me if I was the guy who wrote that newspaper column.  When I replied that I was, he smiled said “You’re not at all a curmudgeon in person!”

I decided to take that as a compliment because, well, why not?  So as I started working on this month’s column, which is about many of the imponderable things that I stumble across in my daily life, it made me wonder if a bit of the curmudgeon might be peeking through again.  Possibly.  

So this time I decided to do something about it.

This time, I decided to warn you in advance.

Imponderable #1:  I noticed a young couple in the park, virtually every square inch of visible skin was embroidered with tattoos of every description.  Given this popularity of ink-infusion, I began wondering how long it might be until, genetically, the first infant is going to be born with a tiny tattoo already in place.  Maybe pre-inked with a nicely flourished little “Mom” on one arm?

Imponderable #2:  Iron-on transfers are silly little slogans or pictures that can be used to iron on to an otherwise perfectly good tee-shirt.  Here’s the actual warning label that was deemed necessary to accompany one of them:  “Transfer will be hot.  Do not iron on while wearing shirt.”  

Now they say that every warning label is prompted by an actual incident, which inevitably led me to ponder who the guy was that had prompted this one.  I had a mental image of him on his gurney in the emergency room, looking down at the second-degree burn on his stomach in the perfect shape of a steam iron, thinking, “Whoa Dude, that hurt worse than the pierce-your-own nipple kit I got for Christmas.  If that happens like three or four more times, I may have to think of like a different way of doing it!”

Imponderable #3:  As I watched a guy make three attempts to back his pickup truck into a parking space at the grocery store, I began to ponder why exactly it is that guys are compelled to back into parking spaces?  Are they truly on call for something important, need to respond at a moment’s notice – say a hot dog bun emergency at the family barbecue?

Imponderable #4:  Why can’t women ever put the toilet seat up?  I mean come one.  Just once?  

Imponderable #5:  As a world-famous writer, I occasionally get invited to what are called Media Events, which are kind of like TV infomercials, but without people doing stupid things in black white.  One of these to which I was recently extended an invitation – probably now never will be again – featured an imponderable event known as a “Cigar Tasting.”  

The more I looked at that invitation, the more imponderable it became.  I had to first get past the initial impression that I was going to be served small dishes of diced cigar along with a fork:  “Now as you crunch on this aged Monticristo, you’ll notice the bitter asphalt tang of the tobacco juice as it’s released down the back of your throat, just before the soggy leaf lodges between your teeth.”  But the reality of the event somehow seemed even worse, nauseously puffing on cigar after cigar in a smoke-filled room.  I thought perhaps instead I could just sit in a tunnel wait for a train to pass through fill it with fumes – if I’m going to pass out anyway, that would be quicker more humane.

Imponderable #6:  Let’s say you manufacture electronics.  You have a ginormous facility that makes state-of-the-art cell phones.  Your phones have bells whistles for their bells whistles.  They can unlock doors, mow the lawn, groom the dog, paint the house, do homework for kids that aren’t even yours, perform a colonoscopy when you least expect it.  So with all that technology at your fingertips, Mr. Electronics Whiz Manufacturer Person, here’s one of the biggest imponderables I’ve been struggling with.

Why are your automated voicemail people such complete snots?

Really – would it be too much to ask for you to take a break from writing apps simply program in a voice that’s polite?  I was trying to get a message off my phone the other day, , after apparently taking an extra nanosecond to press the appropriate button, this horrid, cranky, disembodied semi-female voice says “Are you still there?”  I kid you not!  I have never in my entire life so desperately wanted to squeeze through a fiber optic line so I could find slowly squash the life out of someone who’s not even alive to start with!  

When you could have any voice in the world do your recordings, why in the name of heaven would you go out to a homeless camp find a 110-year-old woman who spent her life going to cigar tastings pay to use her voice to say impossibly inane things like “Are you still there”?   

Imponderable #7:  Why in the world do I worry about these things.  And, as my wife has asked me for years, will I ever be able to get a life?

Sadly, no.  Part, I image, of the burden of being a curmudgeon.

Paul Bianchina can be reached at paul2887@ykwc.net for comments.