Yelled At by Chris Morin

    On Wednesday nights my wife has knitting class where she goes out for the evening and leaves me alone in the house. Yes you heard me, alone! Now most guys would kill for this and I do appreciate the time to myself. But this past week, no matter what I seemed to do, everyone was yelling at me for no particular reason!
    I got home from work at 5:33PM. I changed into my sweat pants and beat up flannel shirt and plunked myself down in front of the television. I got the remote control, actually all seven of them and lined them up on the couch next to me. Why seven remote controls? If you have to ask that question then you are not a guy. Guys know the reason for seven remote controls.
    I then turned on the television with remote number one, turned on the surround sound system with remote number two, turned on the DVD player with remote number three just in case I wanted to throw in a movie, turned on the VCR with remote number four just in case I couldn't find a good DVD, turned on the six CD changer with remote number five and the other two remotes which probably went to my 1985 VCR and television just sat there lonely but looked great lined up with the others.
    I then decided to call my local pizza place for delivered dinner. Ah the life! Not having to leave the house is so much fun! Anyway, I called the pizza place and the joint was so busy that the guy on the other end of the phone couldn't hear a word I said. He was yelling at me on the other end of the phone, "now that's a large mushroom with a 2 liter of Doctor Pepper right?" Not even fifteen minutes into my quiet evening and I was already being yelled at. I replied but I'm certain he didn't hear a word of it, "no, that's a small pepperoni pizza and a one liter of Coke."
    So after I dealt with Pizza boy, I started flipping through my one hundred useless channels on my new digital cable that was supposed to be the greatest thing since regular cable. Anyway, I stopped on this infomercial with this guy called Tony Little. Now I don't know if you have seen this guy before but I swear to you, this guy is the poster boy for the Caffeine and Sugar Corporation.
    So this Tony Little character was on the screen promoting this new swinging excersize contraption and was screaming at the top of his lungs, "get on the phone right now! Don't miss your opportunity to get this great machine that will make you look and feel great!" As the guy was running arround, bouncing all over the place on the screen, he yelled at his co-star, "now tell me this isn't the greatest thing you have ever seen in your life!" Now I don't know why I watched this informercial. To this day I cannot tell you why I watched it. But what I can tell you is that this guy must have been doing some pretty powerful drugs.
    There was only so much of that yelling I could take so I decided to change the channel. The next channel was the Shop At Home channel. Now call me crazy, but I remember when people used to be so layed back on these type of channels that the most exciting thing they would do was blow some bicycle horn and tell the viewers to call Tootie. Now the guy on this station, I don't know his name and quite frankly I don't care, was screaming at the top of his lungs trying to get me to buy a Ken Griffey rookie card that they only made nine million of and if I didn't get one soon the world will come to an end. "This is a gem mint eight Ken Griffey rookie! They're going fast people! Get on the phone right now people!" The guy was screaming so hard that his face had expanded to three times its normal size and it was as red as an apple. The guy was about to have a coronary in front of my eyes but I couldn't stop watching. It was becoming addicting. I didn't know what a gen mint eight was but it sounded pretty cool and after a while the nine hundred dollar price tag looked pretty enticing!
    But I fought off the temptation to call. I then heard a knock at the front door. I struggled to get up off of the couch, I was so comfortable at that point, and went to see who was bothering me on my man night alone. It ended up being the pizza delivery guy. I asked him how much for the food and he mumbled something that I couldn't understand through his Middle Eastern accent. I asked him to repeat the total and he yelled at me too! I gave him the money and a tip which was more than he deserved. Quite frankly I would have paid anything to get him away from me at that point.
    So I got my pizza and two liter and sat back down on the couch. I then realized that I needed a glass for the Coke. "Eh, I'm all alone, I don't need a glass," I thought. "I'll just drink it from the bottle!" I devoured the pizza and moved on to the next channel. This time it was the Crocodile Hunter who was yelling. This guy, Steve Irwin, was running around picking up deadly snakes saying, "What a little beauty!" and "What a little rippa!" Now I have no idea what a rippa is but it sounded pretty cool so I watched as he ran and yelled and nearly got himself killed.
    After a while it was getting late and I was getting sick of people yelling at me. I decided it was time to cut my losses and go to bed early. Just as I was about to get up and start to clean my man night alone with the screamers mess, the front door opened and in walked my wife. She took one look at me and yelled, "What the hell did you do all night besides watch television, eat and make a mess of my house?"
    Oh well, I thought, maybe things will be better next week.

Chris' Corner