Society Sucks Until It Doesn't

It's interesting when people vent to me in public. When people who didn't go to college (or those who did but can't remember their sociology course) ask me "What's sociology?" I give them a short answer ("If it happens in society, we study it") before I attempt to go into a longer answer. I usually don't get to the longer answer because people tend to stop me when they hear the word society. "Society sucks," a person once said to me during one of these conversations. This week my barber and I were shooting the breeze and when he asked me about sociology and I said the word society he proceeded to offer critical observations about society.

This morning a car pulled in front of me in traffic after they had left a drive thru and I was behind the car at a red light. When the light turned green the car didn't move, so I lightly tapped the horn. The person gave me the finger. Me tapping the horn at volume 1 in no way shape or form warranted the middle finger but people will do what they do, and, like the critics say, society sucks.

Our destination was soccer practice and while 9-year-old played soccer our 6-year-old was bored. So was the sibling of someone else playing soccer, and she was saying to her mom that she wanted to go to the nearby playground. Her mom was chatting with my wife. We all know each other. I offered to take her to the playground with my son and it was win-win all around. When it was time to head back to the practice, my son and his friend ran back from the playground. Something that cracks me up is when a kid is running and suddenly busts into a cartwheel, which is exactly what his friend did. That kind of thing makes me very happy. See, when I run I'm just trying to get from A to B in one piece. When a kid goes from running to cartwheel I'm reminded that kids are great and that they haven't been stained by society yet. I'm also thankful to kids for reminding me that society sucks until it doesn't.

When we got back to practice a big beautiful dog was standing near us with his huge tongue hanging out, dripping saliva. Dogs rule and dogs are way better than people, we all know that already. I motioned to the dog to come see me because I love dogs and love to love them up. He was skeptical but slowly sidled up to me and started licking me and splashing me with saliva. Another win-win and another reminder that dogs are a vital part of society and a major reason that society doesn't suck 100% of the time.

After practice there was a variety of adulting taking place. My wife ran into a store to buy a birthday gift, then she ran into Lowe's to return something, then when we got home I mowed the lawn while she did assorted yard work. The highlight of my day (other than the cartwheeling kid and the slobbering dog) was that I put a half cup of vinegar in a bowl in our dishwasher and ran it through a hot cycle and that seemed to clean up our dishwasher nicely. We still need to vacuum and do all the kids' laundry but that's adulting that can probably wait until tomorrow.

Yesterday I met a deadline by submitting work. It's something that was on my plate for several months. It was a relief to meet the deadline and my priority for the rest of the day is to celebrate.