9 pet peeves

Pet peeves. Stuff that pisses us off. Stuff that pisses us off and probably shouldn't, but our time is much better spent being annoyed at whatever the hell is bothering us, instead of taking a deep breath and being patient. To being pissed off! (Editor's Note: Few of these will be my own, genuine pet peeves. Most of (to all of) these will be things that I remember from Values Game, or from this website.)

1. People who clog up the right lane. This wouldn't bother me so much if there was a street in Watertown that I frequented enough, but when there are two lanes where you're driving, and you want to turn right on red, one of the worst things in the world is when someone in the right lane wants to go straight. And is stopped at that red light. And you can't go anywhere. If you are one of these people, 1) damn you, 2) please go to the left lane.

2. Not giving reasons for something. In my much more cynical days, I preached that there was always a reason for something happening. Note - this is VERY DIFFERENT from "Everything happens for a reason." That is false and I do not believe it. What I do believe is that there is always reason behind actions. Something made you do what you did, or say what you did, and when people respond with "because" instead of searching for said reason, well....that's frustrating, to say the least.

3. Leftover time on the microwave. Totally stealing this from Daniel Juergens, who might have won Values Game by saying exactly that, and nothing else. Got a huge round of applause from the PMs.

4. Bad grammar. You could be writing the greatest thing ever, but if you tell me that you're "to good" at something, then you immediately lose all credibility of having a worthwhile conversation. Read more here.

5. People who think they have OCD. I don't know why this wasn't the first one, this probably pisses me of the most. There is a stark difference between having everything aligned and neat, and having to wash your hands after every time you touch a doorknob because you are literally and psychologically obsessed with keeping clean. There is a difference between disliking multiples of 3, and having to turn the light switch on and off seven times because you have a literal and psychological compulsion to do so.

6. People who still think they have OCD. And despite what I just said, this won't stop anybody.

7. Highway drivers. Between people weaving in and out of traffic who go ten miles per hour faster than everybody else for whatever reason, people on their cellphones as they're driving 75 miles per hour (or texting, which is exponentially worse), people who don't get the hint when they've slowed down traffic by going 60 in the left lane, and people who change lanes without indicating, driving on the highway absolutely sucks. To the point where I really think I'm going to die in a highway car crash eventually. One of my friends once told me that it takes two careless drivers to cause a car crash, but on the highway, I think this is excepted.

8. People who think "dived" should remain an appropriate past tense of "dive". It totally is an acceptable form of the past tense of "dive," but it just sounds so awful that it needs to be "dove." If you say to someone that you "dived in the pond," you just sound like you have no idea what you really did. And I know that I'll get flak for this because I say "draw" instead of "drawer," but hey, c'est la vie.

9. When I can't finish something numerical. I'll tie everything together here by saying that it kinda bothers me when I don't finish a list like this. This blog post is one of the first that comes to mind, which is just an embarrassment of an idea for a blog post. But if I'm reading a book (which rarely happens, I will add) and for whatever reason I fall two pages shy of finishing a chapter, that'll bug me. This only happens with numbers though, I think. If I'm eating a box of Cheez-Its, I have no problem leaving a very small number of Cheez-Its in the bag for a later time.