The entrance to my apartment building has a buzzer box beside the door. There are two lines of buttons numbered one through six. The red line of buttons has "A" under it. The black line of buttons has "B" under it. Twelve apartments. A1, B1, A2, B2, etc. You want in, you buzz your friend's place. They come down and let you in. It's not rocket science.

Most of the buttons have no markings other than the letter-number combo. I tell my friends I live in 3B, but I also put a label beside my apartment's button which says "Estep" in large, friendly block letters.

Now answer this question: If you're looking for your friend and your friend's name isn't Estep, WHY IN BLUE FUCK ARE YOU PRESSING MY BUTTON? Do you have any idea how annoying it is for me to clomp down the fucking stairs and open the door so you can look at me with that slack-jawed yokel look while you waft the rich smells of pork rinds and Juicy Fruit at me and ask "Is Gayle home?"

GAYLE? WHO THE FUCK IS GAYLE?

I threw on clothes for THIS? Fuck you.

I know apartment numbers aren't always easy to remember. You think you have it lodged in your skull and thoughts of NASCAR or Alan Jackson or Pamela Anderson's tits drive it out by the time you get to your friend's house. That's fair. That's fine. But simple process of elimination says your friend DOESN'T LIVE IN THE APARTMENT MARKED "ESTEP." You should be ignoring that button from the start. It clearly will not help you. This isn't a puzzle where the letters have been scrambled for your amusement.

And I know the laws of chance haven't been suspended to create an anomalous building where all the occupants are named "Estep" because there also are buttons marked "Cox" and "Hupp." If your friend's last name isn't "Estep," "Cox" or "Hupp," you have a 1-in-9 chance you'll get the right apartment on the first unlabeled button you press. Hell, pretend you're in Vegas and hit 'em all. Maybe you'll win the jackpot and some stripper will give you a lapdance. The sane ones only put the labels on the buttons so you'd leave us alone. We want our friends to find us, not you!

I bet your lips move when you read, don't they? Fess up! We may as well have a conversation about how you were terrified of reading because your third-grade teacher used to take down your pants and molest you in the cloak room. I mean, as long as we have this time together. I may as well add "Therapist" to the unwanted job title of "Information Desk," as long as we're here.

And you know what? I'm not letting you inside. Not just because it's against the rules of the building, but because I don't trust you to find your way back out. I don't want to be responsible when you wander from door to door, knocking and asking startled tenants about Gayle.

You'd probably drift downstairs with the other ignorant fucks who couldn't understand the labeling concept and create a colony in the laundry room. Then I'd have to walk through your little town when I want to wash clothes, and I'd start blaming Gayle for my missing socks. Six years later, I'll be a raving drunk who wears a tinfoil hat and wanders the streets warning people about Gayle. The police will pick me up, put me in a detox unit, and nobody will understand that it's all your fault.

Are you the source of the CIA's faulty intelligence on Iraq? Let me guess, the soldiers sent you in first when they nabbed Saddam. You asked him if Gayle was in the hole, and he was too stunned at your stupidity to pull a gun. That's how they got him without a fight, wasn't it?

It's no wonder other industrialized nations are kicking our asses in every academic subject. We're churning out illiterate mouthbreathers who can't even read a label written at a second-grade level.

I swear to God, the next asshole who buzzes my door and isn't looking for me is going to get shot in the head. I'll buy a gun special for this. I'll tell him Gayle's home, invite him in, let him follow me and then turn around and fire right under the chin so he can bounce back down the stairs while spraying blood in every direction. How would that grab your dumb ass, you nimrod?

FUCK!

Okay, I feel better now. Carry on.