Paroled

It's true. My family and I are returning home to our house in Elk Grove. Our sentence is up for our stay in Philadelphia and we will once again breath the free (although smoggy and allergen riddled) air of California. Now that we're leaving I have some mixed emotions. I am very happy to go home to be around family and friends again. I am also really looking forward to an income. There are going to be a lot of things I'm going to miss about our stay out here in the East. I will miss spending so much time with my daughter. I will miss the freedom of planning my day around what I feel like doing. I will miss...well, I think that's really it. We are leaving at a good time of the year. The sun has been out, the weather warmer, the birds flying, the jerks a plenty. I've been running into a lot of jerks in my travels as of late. I think it's because I'm actually getting out more, not that the jerk population has increased. It stays, according to the statistics, at a fairly steady 90% jerk level. Let me give you an example. As I walk around with my incredibly cute and pleasant daughter, either walking next to me or in a stroller, people give extremely dirty looks to us. As if to scream to the world "A kid! What on Earth is a kid doing here! My day is ruined!" I am not making this up. I have been wanting to actually ask someone why they are giving such disgruntled looks at my kid, but have thought that I don't particularly feel like being stabbed or bludgeoned. Going to the local drug store is also quite the chore. The words "Customer Service" don't exist out here for some reason. The people behind the counter treat you in such a way as to say "I am really put out by the fact that you actually want to buy something. I would rather just stand here and angrily stare off into space then help you. Maybe if I treat you with contempt you will never come back and I will get to stand here a little longer next time." I actually ran into a very nice person today at the Post Office of all places. I'm sure that once I left her window, a bag was placed on her head as she was forced out from behind the desk and into a chair in a back windowless room and re-indoctrinated into the "We aren't supposed to help anyone" school of thinking with a little "How to give the stink eye" lessons for good measure.
I am afraid however that a bit of the jerkiness has rubbed of on me. I notice that I honk a lot more out of frustration as I drive now. And I'll be damned if I'm letting anyone get in front of my car in a line!!! In fact I make sure that some of the molecules of my bumper are touching the molecules of the bumper in front of me just to make sure. And if you try and make eye contact with me to plead your case you can forget that brother! Take your sorry excuse someplace else! Woah...I'm sorry. I got carried away there. As you can see I'll need a little bit of help regaining the calm personality that you Californians are so famous for. You can't help but feel the pressure to become a jerk out here. At first I thought it spread like a virus like that movie Outbreak. Or it was simply a result of others jerky mood effecting your own, like some kind of "Pay it Forward: Jerk Style". But I think now I've discovered it has more to do with the weather. The weather is only nice for two days of the year. The rest of the time it's a humid wasteland. Either super hot and humid. Or super cold and humid. Your brain does funny things when you've had to unstick your shirt from your back for the fortieth time in one day. And let's not talk about what happens to us men.
I'm not trying to make a case for being jerky, nor am I trying to say that there aren't some very lovely people out here. We have met a lot of those 10% nice people that are running around here (mostly from other states). It's been the only way we've managed to make it the entire time.
As we leave this week, we will reflect on our time spent "back east". And as time goes on we will think fondly of our stay in Philadelphia. And we will remember, that we beat it out of there just in time.
So long Philadelphia.