It takes a lot to get me going. I have a lot of tolerance for other people’s actions. Most of the time I don’t judge. Maybe I’m just afraid of seeing any stones I cast come back at me, but I think it’s a little more than that. I’m willing to overlook someone’s faults and weaknesses (or at least see them as quirks and foibles).

I don’t have to work hard at not being offended. It just comes naturally. I know plenty of people who live their lives at hair-trigger readiness to punish anyone who looks at them sideways. If you make a mistake with someone like that, watch out. You might get cut off at the knees, or cut out of the herd and sacrificed. I couldn’t be that judgmental if I tried. I laugh it off. I let it slide.

There is one thing you can do to me that will get me to call you all kinds of nasty names. And it happened today, twice. The phone rang, I answered it, and there was silence on the line. I hate that so much I can’t even tell you. To me, that’s the rudest thing you can do, hanging up on someone without even a word. I can take all kinds of abuse, but that’s over the line. So to speak.

If I have to stop my life to answer the phone, the least you can do is say something. It doesn’t even have to be something nice. Just don’t leave me hanging, because I’m going to have to take it out on the telephone. That’s not really fair, but it’s all I have.

So if you tried to call me this afternoon and got a busy signal, I’m sorry. The second time it happened, I made sure it wouldn’t happen again by throwing the phone across the room without hanging up. Blame the fool who pushed me over the edge.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m the soul of patience, especially when I’m short on sleep (which is almost all the time). But it’s not people who get to me. Usually it’s inanimate objects. I get mad at things like the printer that mangles my envelopes, and the toilet that won’t flush and the DVD that skips and a thousand other petty annoyances that won’t feel hurt if I think badly of them. Maybe that’s why I go so easy on people, because I’ve already taken it out on gizmos and gewgaws.