As the old woman deliberately planted the rubber tip of her cane on Georg's Converse clad foot in her attempt to board the bus, Georg gazed up into the blue vault of the L.A. sky and discovered politeness was his downfall. From the gentle, bloody smiles he offered in payment for the frequent beatings from childhood bullies to the indentation he acquired on his left shoulder during his adolescence when scores of pretty girls wept away their pain between engagements. During these encounters, Georg often ran simulations of gratitude in his head, which increased during his five year tenure as a junior accountant at a Big Eight firm where he worked nights and weekends and three of the four seasons of the year with no chance for promotion. Georg remembered the day the firm let him go; as he walked out into the warm, windy October afternoon with his final evaluation in one hand, and his two weeks of severance pay in the other, he gazed, uncomprehending, at the phrase no ambition, in the middle of the page until his eyes watered, and then, walked two blocks west to the faux British pub where he spent his check on an evening's worth of drinks for anyone who felt like being his fair-weather friend. It was the best three hours of accolades Georg ever experienced, except, of course, for the heart-felt thanks he received from his best friend upon offering him a tumbler full of Jim Bean whiskey... minutes after Georg discovered him in flagrante with Georg's wife in a bed he was still making payments on... Thirty five years of rage burned a hole in the top of Georg's head at the sudden departure of his angel of civil behavior. For a nano-second, he beheld the words political correctness in flames before him. As intoxicating waves of new-found arrogance washed over him, Georg pushed past the old woman and took the last available seat.

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