Saturday, October 31, 2009

I might be living with Mr. Vogel

A long time ago there was a man in town named Mr. Vogel.  I didn't know Mr. Vogel personally but I knew him because he wrote to the local paper every week complaining about something.  And it was always something odd.  Things like:  "Why does our town have to have diagonal parking?  Can't we have parallel parking on every street?  Why when I was a young man you were only taught parallel parking, that diagonal parking is for commies!"    

Ok, yes, I made that up but thats the sort of comment the man made every week.  I imagined the newspaper people put his letters in every week because they were so entertaining to regular people.

Me and the husband used to read his letters out loud.  (should that be aloud?)     

As my husband gets older and more crotchety he notices more and more things that make him irritated.  Every time he notices spray paint tagging he says things like "Look at that!  More tagging!  I need to call the city to do something about it. Damned kids!"   or "Hey, those neighbors can't do that, I'm gonna call our city councilman and get him to do something."  He becomes outraged over things in our neighborhood.

I guess it's good, but really I don't want to hear the crotchety-ness.  He gets all riled up and wants me to get all riled up too.  Hmmmm, I don't want to get all riled up, my stress levels don't need to raise by stuff like that.  If I say, "ah huh." he gets cranky at me that I don't care.  I do but I don't want to hear the bitching.  Reminds me of Frank Vogel.

Today we had an escaped rehab person (about a block over is a rehab hospital).  Some guy walked out of there, came to our street, broke into someones house thru the window and then came out the front door.  He then proceeded to ask our neighbors for a glass of water.  The police were called and they caught him an hour later.

Tonight the hub tells me he gonna call our councilman because of it.  Why?  I asked him.  Because evidently the hospital doesn't have good enough security.

I'm thinking the hospital knows this and will take the appropriate action.  We've lived her 15 years and we've never had an escaped rehab person before.  

I told the husband that he's sounding like Mr. Vogel...that's a little out there to call the city councilman over a rehab escape.  

He laughed but I'm thinking he still might call the poor man.  

It's a good thing the paper eventually made a rule that only one letter to the editor a month would be published.  Otherwise I might end up seeing my hub's name in the paper every week.  

5 comments:

Brother Atom Bomb of Reflection said...

Frank Vogel. Every once in awhile, Mom would comment on his latest letter, saying: "he was like that in high school too."

Anonymous said...

this one made me giggle inside. :)

VO said...

It made you giggle because it's true!

Billy Canary said...

he crawled in a window.

VO said...

That;s what I said. He came in thru the window and left out the door.