Ctrl + Alt + Del won’t erase stupidity

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So I’m sure everyone has heard about the guy who slammed into the rear of a school bus because he might have been distracted by the naked woman he had sitting in the truck beside him. Eyewitnesses say he never touched the brakes and seven little kids went to the hospital, along with him and his naked passenger. Troopers had to give her a towel to cover up with in front of the kids, but I’m fairly certain seeing a naked woman paled in comparison to watching an 18-wheeler smash into the rear of their bus. Thank God none of them died, and I sincerely hope a certain “delicate” part of the driver’s anatomy suffered painful and irreparable damage.

It makes me sick to read about wrecks like this. I try really hard not to make judgments about accidents in big trucks, because no matter what, unless you are actually in the truck, you don’t know what happened. But then you read things like this, and there’s just absolutely no scenario on the face of the earth that could make it OK. None. These are the people I’d like to erase from the system, just go in and Ctrl+Alt+Del them and make them disappear.

Confession time. I worked as a telemarketer for a very short period of time, way back in the 90s. My job was to sell insurance on credit cards, so I had access to the information screen of the accounts I was trying to sell. When someone was really excessively nasty to me, I’d just mosey on over to their status and make them dead, which began the process of closing their credit account and rendered their card unusable. I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to imagine the guy who told me to go eff myself standing at the gas station with a full tank of gas and a useless credit card. (Remember – this was back in the 90’s when you could pump before paying.) Needless to say, I was unceremoniously asked to leave that job, which was fine with me because it was a miserable existence when I couldn’t make people dead.

(Side note: If you happen to be one of the people I made dead, I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused you, but you should really be nicer to telemarketers. They have a job to do too, you know.)

Unfortunately, real life isn’t as easy, there’s no “delete” button, and the roads are full of people – professionals or otherwise – who just aren’t doing it right. Maybe all the regulations have muddled the original idea, but the basic concept is pretty simple: “eyes on the road, mind on the load.” Making it harder by adding things like naked women in the cab is just plain stupid. Stop it. And put your shoes on.