Jeff Whitten, a.k.a Pickles Gruber, Unhappy Camper
I have decided to update my byline. No more Jeff Whitten, sawed-off semi-retired and semi-literate hack babbling on about whatever pops into the old extra-large noggin. Now I’m using the nom de plume Pickles Gruber, Unhappy Camper, to babble.
Yep. You can call me Pickles.
Why?
Simple.
I’m obviously not a happy camper. Even though I want to be.
After all, I could use this space to write about, say, my wonderful wife or all the fun I have had during most of my existence goofing off and messing about, a practice I still pursue, by the way, whenever my wife’s not looking. I could wax eloquent on how lucky I am to be an nth generation native of the greatest state in the world – that’s South Carolina, for those of you who don’t know any better.
Or, I could type up a storm explaining how lucky I am to be living in a country where, no matter how bad it might get, I still have it better than folks do in a lot of other places. Like Ohio, for instance.
But do I take the high road and wax eloquent about the good stuff? Nope.
I’d evidently rather complain and whine and grumble about the same old headaches over and over again. About traffic. About politicians. About transplants who drive around like they own the place. About the continued fallout from the self-esteem movement, which left us with a nation of grownups who think it’s always somebody else’s fault and everybody’s dumber than the person in the mirror, who’s obviously a genius. Truth is, if everybody’s special nobody is, and our right to swing our fists is supposed to end at other folks nose, but try telling that to people who cook up mixed use developments, and where once we collectively thought it was better to talk softly and carry a big stick now we bluster about how big our stick is. We advertise it on our collective t-shirts or tattoo it on our backsides, and trumpet it from on high. “We bad.
Don’t mess with us.”
Do I know what I just wrote? No. Doesn’t matter.
But I digress. Rather than talk about the beauty of flowers, or the way boiled peanuts smell fresh out of the pot, I’d obviously rather burble on about over development and under appreciation of what we had before developers took over local governments and sold us out to the highest bidders to the point we’re busting at the seams and you can’t get from one side of town to the other without it taking a lot longer than it used to and by the time you get there you forgot why you made the trip.
I suppose complaining is supposed to make me feel better, even when it doesn’t.
But at least I got a good sulk out of it.
Worse, even stuff that’s supposed to be fun, such as college football, tends to turn into a bunch of bellyaching before it’s over.
Why didn’t they run the ball? Why did they run the ball? What’s wrong with our defense? How come we didn’t score more points?
Why is Lane Kiffen allowed to be Lane Kiffen? How come the PA guy says “ridden down?” when someone is tackled? Why do local TV sports people say “he would go on to score,” when they could just say “he scored?”
Makes no sense to me.
While I’m at it, just go ahead and fire the coach (I can think of a couple of coaches who fit that bill) and put us out of his misery, or maybe put him out of our misery. And let’s just terminate everybody while we’re at it, from the AD and president on down to the guy who didn’t get our booster club packets to us until three weeks into the regular season.
Of course it’s Biden’s fault. Or it’s the fault of that yahoo currently in the White House who, as someone aptly noted, can’t finish a sentence he started without the second half of what he just said getting in a fight with the first half.
I’d like to say that in being an unhappy camper I’m something of a nonconformist, and in the small company of a select few, but the truth is I’m just part of a nation of disgruntled naysayers who ought to know better.
As a result, much of the information overload coming at us these days basically boils down to complaining.
We gripe, and howl, and yowl, and beef, and fuss, and protest, and whinge, and wail, and nag, and lament, and bemoan, and object, and quibble, and stew, and holler, and mutter, and worry, and squawk, and squeal, and carp, and quarrel, and, if we get real serious about it, take the buggers to court or at least raise you-know-what about it all over community social media pages.
Where, on any given day, there’s umbrage and outrage and hot air enough to run a good-sized city for a month, usually expressed by people who probably have it better than 99.9 percent of the world’s population. It’s as if for most of us the grass is not only greener somewhere else, but unfairly so. We got hosed. And go ahead and pick a villain, any villain.
Illegal immigrants, rich people, yankees, rednecks, woke people, boomers, developers, fake news, Gen. Z, millennials, liberals, right wing lunatics, people who worship differently, people with different skin colors, funny looking retired editors, the list could go on and on. If it wasn’t for them, our grass would be greener.
Someone a couple decades ago wrote that the U.S. was falling victim to a “culture of complaint,” and boy was that person right -- though he tended to point the finger at one side of the political circus, er spectrum, when the truth is it’s all of us.
Anyhow. Glad I got that off my chest.
Your pal, Pickles.
Jeff Whitten is a former editor of the Bryan County News.