This is NPR...

In my family there was one basic characteristic that distinguished the adults from the children. Typically this characteristic manifested itself on car trips, but on the occasional Saturday morning it could also be found in the Carpenter household. Once the line was crossed, that's how you knew you were no longer a kid anymore...you had finally grown up.

My friends, I crossed that line recently. No, it had nothing to do with graduating from college. It has nothing to do with moving out of the country (though every person in my family seems to think moving out of the country after is college is just what you do...hey, no complaints here!). It has nothing to do with, on average, how many fights per week occur between parent and child.

It has everything to do with National Public Radio.

If you've had your own NPR experience, you realize that the SNL skits that spoof the programming are actually dead on. The reporters sound like they are sitting in in a dungeon of a basement somewhere, reporting on news from around the world. On car trips I used to groan as I heard the monotone voice, that always sounds the same, come over the speakers, knowing that listening to my Walkman was out of the question due to the high decibel level of the spoken voice. I usually chose to fall alseep in protest. I hated NPR.

Recently I find myself growing bored with music on the radio. Top 40 stations seem to play the Top 3 same songs over and over, and usually it's some bad hip hop song that never would have made it in the 90s (aka The Decade of The Greatest Music of all Time). I tune to alternative rock and it's the same thing, just some guy singing who sounds like he's constipated. (Hinder, anyone? I rest my case.) So I've been left with silence-- *gasp!* -- or NPR. And I chose NPR.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially an adult.

Yesterday on NPR I heard a story about a man who is suing a dry cleaners for $54 million because they lost his pants. It helps that he's a judge, so he knows the legal system in and out, and under consumer protection laws he's figured out that since they displayed a sign that read "Satisfaction Guaranteed" and they lost his dockers he, naturally, should get a mere $54 million in reparation. The business is owned by a Korean immigrant family, and the report said that just in legal fees alone he has already cleaned them out. The trial began yesterday, and I wonder how long it will take this jerk to figure out that he deserves to never have any friends ever again for the rest of his life? I understand the need for fair treatment, blah blah, but when does doing the right thing and NOT suing an immigrant family for an absurd amount of money over a pair of pants cross his mind?