Without Chocolate You or the Movie Could Be Obnoxious

Here’s some interesting news Sam and I read in our Sunday newspaper. Apparently, some researchers have discovered that “the best way to make a good movie great might be to watch it with someone else.” Okay, we’ll buy that.

On the other hand some movies will not be great no matter whom you watch them with. Kathleen and I just returned home from seeing the movie “Track,” a true story about a young Australian woman who spent a couple hundred days walking 1,700 miles across her mostly dry and arid country. She said several times to people, including a very nice National Geographic photographer, “I just want to be left alone,” so her company for most of her trek was nothing more than four camels and a black Labrador dog. The movie wasn’t too bad, but after nearly two hours of watching that woman walking across the desert and refusing friendly gestures from people – even with Kathleen by my side – I decided “Track” was not a great movie.

In fact, I found the young Australian woman to be just a little bit insufferable and obnoxious, which leads me to regurgitate part of a blog I wrote a couple years ago about what makes people obnoxious.

Following is a checklist to find out if you are obnoxious.

You may be obnoxious if:

1. You constantly urge people to have a nice day.

2. You speed around the person in front of you on the on-ramp to enter the freeway first or you suddenly cut from the far left (fast) lane across four lanes of traffic to exit the freeway.

3. Your order at a fast-food drive up takes longer than a minute or two because you can’t make up your dad-blamed mind what you want or you’ve been sent to fetch lunch for a dozen co-workers.

4. You don’t slide your debit card and enter your ID number at the grocery store until you’ve argued about the prices, until you’ve searched your purse for an expired coupon or until the clerk sends someone clear to the back of the store to find an item not in stock anymore.

5. You constantly insist that you’re vegan or insist that I try sushi (I’m not a shark)

6. You litter, throwing fast-food cartons or your danged cigarette butts on the ground or out your car window

7. You get in my face to ask me if I’m saved (yes I am, thank you)

8. Your dog poops on other people’s lawns or you don’t pick up behind your dog in public places

9. You don’t replace toilet paper when the roll is empty

10. You need to regale me with details of your surgery

Personally, I consider myself to be a Sunny Jim. I can’t imagine that my friends and acquaintances might think otherwise. But I have often wondered if there is a special secret to living harmoniously with other people and I think that secret is to not be obnoxious.

Those researchers who did the movie study also came to the conclusion that eating chocolate while in the company of someone you liked made the chocolate taste a lot better. Personally though, I like chocolate no matter who I’m with. But I had a Payday bar at the movie so maybe that had something to do with my bad review. I love Paydays but they aren’t chocolate.