Why is CJG So Cranky? It's As Easy as A, B, Z

For more than five decades now, crankyjewishguy (CJG) has tried to understand what it is that makes him so cranky. Years of expensive therapy, a four-month trek in the Himalayas seeking enlightenment from a wise man, and countless fortune cookies later...and nothing. Until now. You see, yesterday, CJG stumbled onto an article on the Internet, the most authoritative source of information ever invented, and found an article that may explain it.

According to two professors, one at Georgetown University and another at Belmont University, who did what was, no doubt, a very expensive study, people whose last names begin with letters near the end of the alphabet are different from people whose names begin with letters near the beginning of the alphabet. It may surprise you to know that CJG's real name is not really crankyjewishguy, and that his real last name begins with...Z. That's practically the last letter in the entire alphabet. This means two things. First, he's at the far extreme of whatever tendencies afflict those with names that begin with letters near the end of the alphabet and, second, that in elementary school gym class he always had to line up with Jewish kids named Zimmerman, or Chinese kids with names like Zhuan or Zhao.

One of the startling discoveries made by the professors is that people with names that begin with letters such as Z are much less patient than other people. Zorro is a good example. He hardly waited sixty seconds before cutting up people's clothes with his trademark "Z," like some crazed Romanian tailor. One of the experiments that proved this was that when a group of people were sent a survey with a chance to win $500 if they returned it, completed surveys poured in from people with names like Wallace, Yates and Zippy. When an offer for free basketball tickets was made to another group that was told supplies were limited, same thing. (CJG suspects the results might have been different if we're talking Lakers/Celtics as opposed to University of Hartford versus Ursinus.)

Zorro, the world's most impatient man.
The actor's name was Guy Williams. Not much better.

As CJG can attest, those at the end of the alphabet spent so much time as kids waiting for their names to be called for things like popsicles, only to find that some kid named Snodgrass got the last one, that we've been itchy ever since to grab whatever we can in life. This just goes...hold on, there's a pop-up window on CJG's computer screen with a great offer on stain remover...he's just gonna' navigate over there and order a few pallets of the stuff before it runs out.

OK, back. Great. Now CJG forgot what he was saying. Anyway, one of the brilliant controls in this study was that married women's behavior correlated to their maiden names, not their married names, which begs this question: if women named Adams, Breyer and Collins who married people like Wallace, Yates and Zippy had been a little more patient, maybe they could have married less cranky guys with names like Abrams, Bates, and Clarke. CJG thinks he's made his point.