Cranky old me.

I've started doing things in the past year or so that give me reason to believe that I'm going to be one of those bossy old ladies.

It's not that I'm angry, to be honest, or even feeling negative. I just have these, oh, I don't know, URGES to make everything a teachable moment and tell people my opinion on their current and/or recent behavior.

Not that this is any surprise. During the courtship phase of our relationship, my husband asked me what my vision of myself as an older women was, and I responded, one of those bossy old ladies that tells everyone what they should be doing. At the time, he was delighted, saying that this was the sort of wife he figured he'd have. However, I'm not sure that reality is all that delightful.

A couple weeks ago, a woman let someone in line with her in the express lane at the grocery store. They were purchasing seperate items. There were several people behind me, none of whom looked like they had loads of time to spare, so I finally said, "you should ask people in line behind you if it's alright to let someone else cut in line". She looked startled and put her cell phone down to consider this and then apologized. Not long after that, I marched up to a man who tossed his cigarette into a potted flowering plant outside the grocery store and said, loudly, "That is NOT an ashtray!". He looked started, and angry, at this intrusion into his nicotine repast.

I've started muttering, as I walk past people standing befuddled in the middle of aisles and sidewalks, "Excuse ME, people are trying to walk here!" I recently told someone else's child who was hanging from a young landscaped tree and nearly tearing the branch off, "Get down! You're too big to climb that tree." I told another child to pick up his litter, since his parents weren't going to tell him, "Pick that up! There's a trashcan right there!" and shared with a woman a few days ago that I had observed that her turn signal may need to be serviced, since I'd observed her make several turns without it. I HAVE learned that if you say, "Dear,'" or "Bless your heart," it takes the sting out of it.

Husband told me recently about a friend of his who saw someone throw out a bag of trash onto the ground at McDonalds and walked up to the car, knocked on it, and when they rolled it down, he threw it back in there and said, "I think you dropped this". I was choked up, just hearing about it.

I figure I'm within short time of getting an umbrella or a cane to shake at people as I tell them off, and I'm starting to feel a kinship with Maxine, the cranky old Hallmark lady.