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“So like, Dan wants to get in the shower, and I’m all like, ‘don’t drop the soap’.”

“Mm-hm…”

“And Dan starts like, freaking out… and there’s a flashback of him dropping soap as a kid.”

“Uh-huh…”

“And then there’s a bear.”

…and that’s how I explained this comic to Rich on Monday night.  While I was already a few glasses of wine deep into the conversation, I’m pretty sure that even if completely sober, my explanation would have been identical.

Whether or not this is a good thing is still under investigation.

Anyways, it’s been forever since Dan was in a comic!  What’s up with that?  I need cartoonishly silly things happening to him.  In this case, it happened to be a bear.

Considering Dan has no scars that might indicate claw wounds, we can safely assume he made it out of that situation without a scratch on him.

So I was at the bank yesterday waiting in line for the one machine in the building, and when the man infront of me got his turn, his phone rang.  Initially, he didn’t answer and started his transaction, but soon after punching in a few numbers, he took the call…

… and proceeded to ignore the machine.  Surely, this gentleman couldn’t be serious; there was a line full of people waiting for the only machine, and this guy was waiting to finish his call before continuing his transaction.  I’m a pretty sheepish guy, so I wasn’t prepared to tap him on the shoulder or anything, and maybe I’d be wrong to do so if I had the inclination, but I feel as though the guy was being pretty rude.

The twenty-something year old guy standing directly behind me certainly thought so, and wasn’t afraid to say it just quietly enough that only I could hear.

Cue the door opening.

A young woman with two slightly older than toddler age children strolls in and gets in line.  Her kids, being the explorative fellows that they are, dash for the wheelchair ramp and start climbing all over it.  She begins to yell at them and, possibly in an attempt to drown her out, they pull out baby sized metal flashlights and start smacking a pole.

The noise attracts the attention of the cellphone gentleman, who, still talking on the phone, turns around, glares at the children, and finally at the mother before turning back to the machine he wasn’t  using.

Yeah, cellphone guy, she’s the rude one.

Minutes later, the call is completed and the man finally finishes his transaction.  Making sure not to piss off everyone in the line any further, I completed my deposit without any hesitation and got out of the way.

The young man behind me mutters “finally,” under his breath in a nasty tone and approaches the machine.  The children, who had halted their thunder practice at the pleading of their mother, apparently thought they would start getting rusty and whipped out their percussive flashlights again.

Just as I was walking out the door, the young guy, this time pretty audibly, says, “shut the $#&% up.”

Now, I totally understand that the guy was upset.  He had to wait an unusually long amount of time to use the machine, and maybe was in a rush, or had a bad day, or something.  It just seems that cursing at kids, especially ones that aren’t your own, is a pretty lame thing to do.

Maybe my opinion would be different at a movie theater or a fancy restaurant, but we were at a bank; I do not believe that one is necessarily entitled to quiet enjoyment while at a bank.

So this question goes out to you guys:  While I’m pretty sure we can all agree that the cellphone guy was rudely wasting people’s time and could have called his friend/wife/whatever back later, was the younger man over the line when he got pissed at noisy kids while in a bank?  Should we expect silence in places like banks, post offices, and stores?