Mr. Cranky Pants

On the pages of The Greasy Skillet, readers get an airbrushed version of myself. Sure, muddywaters is real, but it doesn't tell the whole story of who I am. The unsavory facets of my personality aren't usually put on display for the public. Unfortunately, my wife and daughter endure my long list of faults, mutations of my personality that will probably never change.

I have a persona my wife and daughter refer to as Mr. Cranky Pants. The name says it all: Mr. Cranky Pants, an introverted, cynical, misanthropic, doomsayer who is annoyed by little things. The following are just a few things that might make him appear:

1. Eating supper/dinner after 6:30.
2. Eating lunch after 12:30.
3. Breaking routine.
4. Changing plans.
5. Loud talking or shouting.
   
6. Dining at restaurants because he starts calculating the money he could have saved by preparing the same dish at home.
7. Going through a drive-thru lane
8. Mix radio stations.
9. The television show Reba.
10. Fluff, pop cultural
11. Computer-generated special effects in movies
12. Politics
    
13. Talking

As you can see, he can be a pain in the rear to live with, but my wife and daughter do a good job keeping him in check. They politely let me know when he's in the room, and they humorously suggest that it would be best if he could quickly exit. I'm learning to keep Mr. Cranky pants in his cage.

Not every post I write makes it to the pages of The Greasy Skillet. Crude material. Negativity. Political rants. Poor material. Any of these variables can result in a post never seeing the light of the day -- although, my blog is littered with poor material that slips through quality control. I also try to keep Mr. Cranky pants away from the keyboard. For example, he found his way to the keyboard last week in a post titled "Daddy Needs a Drink" that I never published. Here's a taste:

I feel like I've been sitting in the front row of the circus a bit too long, and I just realized they don't serve liquor. I'm not a front-row guy; I prefer to be on the fringes, observing things from afar. Daddy needs a drink or at least time alone with his skillet or time to work his sourdough into some bread. I'm going to make my way to the exit, so I'll have time for all of these things in the next week or so. As always, I'll keep you posted.

Later in the post, muddywaters takes the keyboard and tries to lighten the mood with a review of a recent book from The Greasy Bookshelf:


Until then, let me share some excerpts from My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith by Benyamin Cohen. In addition to cookbooks, books about Presidents, Southern literature, and atlases, I enjoy books about man's search for meaning, especially when it comes to religion. I loved Cohen's book because of its humor. We need more books about religion that make us chuckle. The following is a sampling:

I have a red-and-green Starbucks coffee mug with Christmas decorations drawn on it along with the phrase "It only happens once a year." I'm not really sure what that slogan means. Elizabeth thinks it refers to the special Starbucks holiday flavors - the pumpkin spice latte, the gingerbread latte, the Tazo chai eggnog latte, and the popular peppermint mocha - which are only sold during the Christmas season. My guess is it has to do with Starbucks' attempt to pull on people's heartstrings, reminding them ever so cleverly that the holidays they love and the traditions they cherish only happen once a year, so embrace them. Enjoy them. And have some smooth Arabica coffee while you're at it.

Here's another humorous passage:

The difference between the customs of Jewish festivals and those of Christian ones can be summed up like this. Come December, you guys put a Christmas tree in your house. If this were a Jewish tradition, it would turn rather quickly and depressingly into a Talmudic dissertation on forestry. What kind of tree? How tall is it required to be? How many branches does it need to have? Can we outsource the purchasing of the tree or is the commandment itself the actual action of buying said foliage? But I digress.

Nonetheless, I still feel some of our holiday customs take the cake. Most modern-day Americans do not spend a week every year living in an eight-by-twelve-foot hut built on their driveway. Normal American holidays mean turkey. Present. Garlands. Why couldn't I just be normal? That's really all I ever wanted. Can't a Jew get a little tinsel?

Anyway, you can see that the post was a bit disjointed, but it really illustrates that keeping Mr. Cranky Pants in check is a full-time job and often takes the effort of an entire family. I'm grateful to be surrounded by people who love me despite my shortcomings.

May your flaws never become tragic flaws,
mudddywaters