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Speaker 1: Welcome to the ten Minute Storyteller. That's me Bill Simpson,

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Speaker 1: your host, narrator, and author. We hear at the ten

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Speaker 1: minute Storyteller endeavor to entertain you with tall tales or

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Speaker 1: rendered swiftly and with the utmost empathy. We pledge to

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Speaker 1: pack as much entertainment, emotion, and exploration into the human

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Speaker 1: condition as ten minutes will permit mini novels on steroids.

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Speaker 1: This week we meet Claude. Claude is your average run

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Speaker 1: of the mill, middle aged guy with a middle management job.

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Speaker 1: Like millions of his brethren, Claude has a spouse and kids.

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Speaker 1: He owns a house and a couple of cars and

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Speaker 1: a dog. Also, like many of his brethren, Claude gets

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Speaker 1: irritated easily and often irritants. Claude makes it only as

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Speaker 1: far as the bathroom before hit by his first irritant

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Speaker 1: of the day. He hears it before he sees it,

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Speaker 1: the stinking shower head, dripping, dripping, dripping. I thought I'd

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Speaker 1: had that goddamn thing fixed, And less than a minute

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Speaker 1: later in the shower all soapd up. Irritant too hits

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Speaker 1: when the water passes quickly from steamy hot to warm

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Speaker 1: to lukewarm to goddamn freezing cold. Before he can rinse

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Speaker 1: the dove off his private parts. Will Will, a teenager

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Speaker 1: suddenly eager for uber hygiene, doesn't answer. Will is long gone,

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Speaker 1: already out the door and on the bus. He had

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Speaker 1: plenty of steamy hot water for his sixteen minute and

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Speaker 1: forty three second shower. Claude curses, rinses the best he can,

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Speaker 1: turns off the water, and reaches for his towel hanging

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Speaker 1: over the rack. The damn things soaking wet. Will must

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Speaker 1: have used it to dry off. Claude sighs and tries

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Speaker 1: to shake off irritant number three. And it's not even

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Speaker 1: seven o'clock in the morning. Out the door and on

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Speaker 1: his way to work, after a handful of additional domestic

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Speaker 1: irritants crowd his shaving, dressing, and breakfast rituals, including but

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Speaker 1: not limited to, his keys not on the counter where

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Speaker 1: he left them, and his wife of twenty two years

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Speaker 1: reminding him for the nine hundredth time that the garbage

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Speaker 1: needs to go out to the curb this morning. And

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Speaker 1: now Claude becomes a commuter with all of its inherent pleasures. First,

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Speaker 1: a school bus stopping at practically every house to pick

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Speaker 1: up the grammar school kids. Then no sooner does the

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Speaker 1: bus turn off than Lucy lightfoot in her Prius refuses

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Speaker 1: to go even one mile per hour over the speed limit,

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Speaker 1: and she breaks one hundred yards before necessary and acts

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Speaker 1: as though she just says all the goddamn time and

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Speaker 1: the goddamn world to get to whatever it is she

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Speaker 1: might be going, probably to the nail salon or to

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Speaker 1: visit her personal trainer. Claude snarling rides her bumper so

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Speaker 1: close Lucy can see the dab of toothpaste Claude missed

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Speaker 1: when he tidied up after this morning's vigorous brushing, which

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Speaker 1: was exacerbated by the fact that his elder daughter home

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Speaker 1: from college on spring break, had absolutely positively used his

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Speaker 1: razor despite him repeatedly threatening death. Ah I drowning if

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Speaker 1: she so much has touched his sixteen blade Gellette fusion

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Speaker 1: razor blade again. Ever, and now Lucy long forgotten. Claude,

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Speaker 1: eyes narrowed into a scowl, stares at the Porsche in

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Speaker 1: the rear view mirror some dude behind the wheel in

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Speaker 1: his mirrored sunglasses. Hey, listen, jackwad I'm five miles over

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Speaker 1: the speed limit. Already cops on every street corner. I

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Speaker 1: ain't going any faster, so just cool your heels, just

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Speaker 1: cool your jets, dude. But these irritants are just child's

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Speaker 1: play compared to what befalls Claude once he enters the workplace. Here,

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Speaker 1: the irritants are so plentiful and egregious that it can

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Speaker 1: be difficult for Claude to know when one irritant ends

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Speaker 1: and another irritant begins. Betty, for instance, always at the

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Speaker 1: front desk, as though she lives there, doesn't need to

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Speaker 1: eat or go to the john, always chipper, always with

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Speaker 1: a cheery good morning, mister Richardson, and always always always

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Speaker 1: with the gum smacking the damn gum. Claude would fire her,

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Speaker 1: except for two small details. She is an exemplary receptionist,

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Speaker 1: beloved by all, and well, Claude's not the boss. He

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Speaker 1: doesn't have the power to fire her or anyone else. Now,

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Speaker 1: safely behind his desk with the door closed, Claude fires

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Speaker 1: up his computer and is hit, as he is every morning,

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Speaker 1: with a virtual bombardment of emails, all of them, every

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Speaker 1: single one of them, and irritant. An international data processing business,

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Speaker 1: there is always someone somewhere New York, Chicago, La, Tokyo, Singapore,

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Speaker 1: New Deli, By Athens, Paris, London, generating emails, most of

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Speaker 1: them which are entirely insignificant and irrelevant. But which ones

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Speaker 1: That's the irritating, goddamn problem. Which ones? Claude has no

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Speaker 1: choice but to open each one individually, scan the contents,

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Speaker 1: and instantly decide if it needs his attention or it

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Speaker 1: can be jettisoned with a quick cap of the delete button.

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Speaker 1: Half his morning is taken up with the communic cays,

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Speaker 1: and still he's not quite through when the time comes

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Speaker 1: to attend the monthly review meeting. Typically he foregoes these

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Speaker 1: meetings as they are a dreadfully boring waste of time,

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Speaker 1: but his boss is in town, so he leaves his

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Speaker 1: office and trudges down to the conference room, where he

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Speaker 1: sits for the next two hours and eleven minutes, irritated

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Speaker 1: to the point where he has to physically refrain himself

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Speaker 1: from climbing over the huge mahogany table and punching Ed

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Speaker 1: Stokes right in the nose. Ed is an ass liquor supreme,

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Speaker 1: and he's not even subtle about it. The idiot pulls

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Speaker 1: down the pants of every higher up in sight and

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Speaker 1: licks away like some happy hound. Claude would like to

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Speaker 1: enact a law wherein every citizen can assault another citizen

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Speaker 1: without fear of prosecution who is being overly irritating. The

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Speaker 1: workday finally ends. The ride home is slow, one long

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Speaker 1: irritant from the pace of the commute to the truly

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Speaker 1: meaty ocre Spotify playlist that relentlessly pumps out crapola. Claude

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Speaker 1: does not want to hear bon Jovi. Seriously, Dude, Kansas,

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Speaker 1: you gotta be ki ac DC. Claude smacks the advance

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Speaker 1: button and once home, what does he find. Well, he

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Speaker 1: finds that dinner is going to be late. Why because

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Speaker 1: the wife was out with the college kid buying a

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Speaker 1: dress for the new spring formal and dinner Jesus spaghetti.

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Speaker 1: Claude hates spaghetti, leaves him bloated and constipated, But of

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Speaker 1: course he doesn't say a single goddamn word because if

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Speaker 1: he does, the women around the table will come down

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Speaker 1: on him like that hailstorm he encountered while crossing the

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Speaker 1: Great Plains back in aught seven. So he just zips

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Speaker 1: the lip and stews doing the dishes. This evening doesn't

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Speaker 1: irritate Claude as much as usual because the kids actually

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Speaker 1: clear and scrape their plates without being asked, although, and

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Speaker 1: this is interesting, he is mildly irritated because he takes

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Speaker 1: some pervers pleasure in deriding them when they don't help.

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Speaker 1: The dog makes up for it on their evening walk

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Speaker 1: by stopping every three feet to sniff some other dog's

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Speaker 1: peer poop. Claude he just wants to walk get a

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Speaker 1: bit of exercise, but the damn dog has other ideas.

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Speaker 1: Back at the house, the wife and kids have settled

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Speaker 1: down in front of the boob tube and are watching

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Speaker 1: The Bachelor, easily the most irritating program ever produced in

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Speaker 1: the history of television. Claude marches through the room with

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Speaker 1: a sigh and goes into the den, where he pays

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Speaker 1: bills and goes over the family budget, a couple of

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Speaker 1: chores that inevitably leave him highly irritated. The college kid,

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Speaker 1: for instance, in a sorority, now dues two hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixty eight bucks a month. His son's pitching men tour

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Speaker 1: three hundred bucks a month, his younger daughter's a math

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Speaker 1: tutor two hundred and eighty bucks. A month, two hundred

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Speaker 1: and eighty bucks, and all the kid has stays show

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Speaker 1: for it as a stinking b minus. Claude sighs and

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Speaker 1: wonders when the heart attack that befell his old man

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Speaker 1: at age fifty eight will strike him down. Finally, the

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Speaker 1: roses handed out, the bachelor ends, and the troops head

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Speaker 1: upstairs to scroll through their phones. And now finally Claude

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Speaker 1: has the TV all to himself, just him and the dog.

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Speaker 1: He fires up the documentary he started watching last night

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Speaker 1: about the Woodstock Music Festival. He puts the heating pad

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Speaker 1: on his achy back and he scratches the dog's ear,

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Speaker 1: and for the first time all day, Claude feels something

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Speaker 1: akin to pleasure, joy, maybe even rapture. But not to worry.

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Speaker 1: He knows it won't last. Thanks for listening to this

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Speaker 1: original audio presentation of Irritance, narrated as always by the author.

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Speaker 1: If you enjoy today's story, please take a few seconds

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Speaker 1: to rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast, and then

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Speaker 1: go to Thomas William Simpson dot com or additional information

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Speaker 1: about the author and to view his extensive canon. The

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Speaker 1: ten Minute Storyteller is produced by Andrew Pigleasi and Josh

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Speaker 1: Klani and is part of the Elvis Duran podcast Network

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Speaker 1: in partnership with iHeart Productions. Next Time, This is Bill Simpson,

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Speaker 1: your ten minute storyteller,