There are times when I honestly find myself speechless in the face of the sheer rudeness of people. Now, keep in mind, I am rarely speechless, so this is quite a powerful statement. But it is true.

Today I boarded an already crowded bus, and managed to find a seat next to a woman who was reading the newspaper. She apologized several times for the newspaper crossing over into my personal space. Dude, its a newspaper. No worries. Actually, I found myself enjoying reading the pages that did come my way as I had forgotten my book.

Anyway, a few stops later, the newspaper lady got off the bus, and a passanger who had been standing in the aisle took her place. The woman was, like me, not petite, so we were crowded in the two seats-astride seating configuration. This is par for the course on public transportation. What bothered me, however, was that, realizing that she was unable to hold her massive iced coffee, talk on her cell phone, and read her National Equierer at the same time, she leaned over at an obscene angle to facilitate cradling her phone between her ear and her shoulder (and I think I am rather qualified at this point to say that hair hygiene seems not to be a priority for this woman) and was all up in my grill. The paper was all over my lap, and she ended up trying to wedge the iced coffee between her leg and mine. When I suggested that she might like to place the coffee elsewhere as it was rather cold (not to mention DISGUSTING) on me leg, she shot me a filthy look and just got up. Big martyr.

I was just pretty much astounded that this moron would find it acceptable to place her iced coffee cup next to my leg.

Anyway...onto the gym.

It is so typical at my gym for women to walk in 15 or 20 minutes late to an hour-long class and just expect those folks who bothered to show up on time to move all their equipment around. Today, in my double step class, one woman showed up 15 minutes late, caused such an interruption as to cause the instructor to lose focus therefore throw off the entire class. She proceed to set up her equipment at the front of the class, even while she left her purse on the floor in the back of the room. Five minutes later, when some other bitch showed up for class, she caused a huge investigation into whose purse was on the last available inch of space in which she planned to set up her equipment.

Normally, the instructor gets us through six coreography combos in this class, but today she was barely able to get us through five combos.

The thing is that the teachers should throw these jerks out, and I know they'd like to, but they worry about having the members complain.

There are a plethora of other examples of rude and inconsiderate behavior that I could illustrate in detail here, but is it really necessary? I know you all see it on a daily basis.

I know I'm not perfect, but at least I try. I know I don't always do the right thing, but at least when I put other people out I apologize.