Podunk Politics and How Spoiled I Am…

Over the top? But I couldn’t write this morning and it’s cold and I had to drive a long way to get coffee…

Or in the Old Days I Would Have Tied One on, Started a Fight in the Former Yugoslavia and Thrown my Computer in the Garbage – in that order…

I once asked for a second cup of coffee in a breakfast room in Dubrovnik. I was told (in rather good English) that everyone had to have their first cup of coffee before I got a second cup. I wasn’t incensed, but I did do one of those what-a-bunch-of-Podunks-these-people-are sniffs, with a superior eye roll the way Americans do in foreign places when they’re not getting what they are used to getting…

And that is why Communism doesn’t work.

We all want what WE want and we want it now. Pardon my politics, but I’ve been sitting in a Starbucks doing my business for the past three days and there is a hugely annoying guy who is there every morning bellowing about Muslims and doing the Obama-bash and (God help me) it might have rubbed off…

Here’s how spoiled and far from the Dubrovnik days I’ve become:

• I am irritated that I have to drive for ten minutes in the cold Flint morning to get to the free Wi-Fi at the closest Starbucks to contact the entire world;
• When I plugged in this morning and my screen went blank and an un-cancelable, potentially hour long disk error check began, I felt as if I had been diagnosed with something life threatening;
• I drove from Starbucks to Best Buy (Geek Squad?) at 9:30 to find it opens at 10:00 – and beat my steering wheel savagely, screaming to the heavens;
• I arrived at Kinkos with a bad attitude and a list of demands and expected to be disappointed and Stephanie hates me…

When did I get so pushy? When did I get so expectant? I do have to print out a lease, and send a FedEx package and write a blog post and stay tuned-in to the world, but COME ON…