With the experience and knowledge I’ve gained throughout my multiple summers here upon this earth, I have discovered that two minor changes need to take place in our daily routines that will deliver us from the inevitable stress and frustration that ultimately leads to, well, more stress and frustration. Oh yeah, this is assuming, of course, that your daily routine is the same as mine!

Okay, here’s the first one. You see, my mornings go pretty good, all things considered, except when it comes to breakfast. I have noticed that people who eat a healthy quick breakfast, would eat something like a grapefruit or a granola bar or worse yet, an undersized oat-bran mini-muffin with that irritating spray butter that after you’ve developed carpel tunnel from violently pumping your trigger finger, it barely gets your muffin damp! No sir, not me. I need something with a little more substance to start clogging my arteries first thing in the morning.

So, after being scolded by health headlines proclaiming that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I decided to compromise my cholesterol level for some kind of breakfast item that could attempt to also somewhat satiate my taste buds. So, I went to the bagel. I do refuse to toast it, because I’ll never accept the idea that everybody loves soft warm bread but then they’ll turn right around and put that puppy in the toaster and after the charred edges have cut the roof of their mouths, they’ll still insist that it’s delicious. You ain’t foolin’ me, people!

But here’s where I encounter my first frustration of the day. It’s the half-cut bagel. The bagel is only partially cut. It doesn’t even qualify as a “cut”; actually it’s more of a “perforation.”  I mean, is there some little guy sitting in the Thomas’ Bagel Plant who is trained to only cut the bagel, but not all the way?  No, apparently the Thomases want us to pry and break the bagel apart with our hands, which winds up looking more like a strangling maneuver, which results in leaving a badly bruised bagel sitting on top of a plate full of bagel crumbs! And you can’t cut it, either, because you’re concentrating on trying to match your cut with the little bagel guy’s perforation, and then you get off track and then you’ve just introduced yourself to a whole ‘nother set of issues. And don’t go try the English Muffins, ‘cause they’re the same way!

And to add to my frustration throughout the day, enter the speedbump. I’d love to have just five minutes in a room with the guy who came up with this brilliant idea. And we’re being attacked by speedbumps, too. They’re everywhere! Grocery stores, parks, factories, banks, malls, strip malls, antique strip malls, comic strip malls---you name it, they’re there. Obviously, I realize that their purpose is to slow the driver down for the safety of the pedestrian. But when I’m drinking my coffee and go over one these little mountains, my concentration is now spent on negotiating my coffee in mid-air with no regard to any pedestrian that may be impeding my immediate traffic pattern. Pedestrian safety is gone out the window, pal; my only concern is not scolding my inner thighs and contemplating another “coffee-lap lawsuit.”

And then, like it wasn’t annoying enough to start with, somebody decided to put the speedbumps at an angle. So now, your entire car rocks ferociously enough that you can actually bang your head against the window and knock yourself unconscious while driving. Oh yeah, that’s smart. About as smart as a cargo basket on a pogo stick!

I’ll say this much: speedbumps do slow the car in motion down. (Then why don’t we call them slowbumps? ‘Cause we don’t speed over them; we go slower over them!) However, the rage the driver experiences that is brought on by the speedbump is more harmful and impending to the pedestrian than the intended purpose of the speedbump.

So if we could do away with half-cut bagels and those six inch speedbumps, we’re on our way to a happier, stress-free, less frustrating life of blissful living. ‘Cause one thing’s for sure: I ain’t gonna start eating one of them puny healthy grapefruits for breakfast!