Shushers and tourons

So when do people -- especially women, for some reason -- make the decision to take it upon themselves to be the arbiters of all volume at public events? You know them: They're the ones who, when the person in front of the room is trying to get the attention of the crowd, officiously hold their index fingers to their pursed lips and excrete a loud hissing SHHHHHHHHHHHH, their eyes glaring with indignation.

I'm not a shusher. I tend to shut up when asked to or when concerts and other events begin. So I really don't need Ms. Manners wagging that bony digit in my direction. Most of the time shushers are women. Middle-aged women, especially, love to, in fact live to tell the world what to do. It's understandable, I suppose. Middle age brings home to women how truly powerless they are in this society. As soon as they lose that dewy attractiveness that seems to captivate the world, they find no one really is interested in them at all.

Go to a crowded counter where there is no numbering system. No matter who is waiting on the group, the men will get attention first. Then the attractive people. Then the seniors. Then the rest, kids, teens and middle-aged women. I've stood in many a crowd watching wave after wave get waited on while I'm ignored. It's infuriating. But it hasn't led to shushing, at least not yet.

I suppose complaining becomes such a siren call to older people because it's a way of dissecting the world as one has less and less impact on it. Of course, there are many who just love to complain for the sake of complaining. Perhaps they feel superior because only they have standards that can never be met.

So now I've complained about the complainers and shushed the shushers. I suppose I will just sit there quietly, letting the shushers enjoy their vital function in the worldwide order. After all without their sibilant shushes civil society would degenerate into cacophonous chaos.



We call them tourons affectionately as the invade our sleepy seaside town year after year. They are the hands that feed us, they bring tons of much-needed money here and add some excitement, but if you've ever been late for an appointment or for work and you're behind someone who has no idea of where he/she is and where he/she is going, you'd understand the Venturan frustration at the bumbling, impatient, rude and annoying influx we invite here to spend money.

Tourons don't know the roads like we locals do, so they do things like stay in the left lane on Hwy 33 as it passes Stanley going south, despite the numerous signs saying that traffic merges from the left. They don't know that the intersection of Harbor Boulevard and California Street is not a three-way stop and that traffic from California going onto Harbor has right of way and doesn't stop. They don't know all the quirky nonsensical things about this town so they seem to be in the way a lot.

The place where the tourons put the moron in tourist is always at the beach. Despite the fact that it's a crime in California to in any way disturb or harass wildlife, you'll always see tourons swinging starfish by their legs, poking anemones or running at the seagulls flapping their arms to make them fly, as the guy in this picture was just doing before I took this picture.

I want to go up to them and read them the riot act. "What the hell are you doing? Leave the poor animals alone." But then I would be akin to the shushers. And that's just not me. Yet. So I grit my teeth, take their picture and watch them write on the wet sand -- something every touron does. At least they didn't ignore the vast expanse of beach to come and sit 10 feet from us.