Pet Peeves: An Exhausting But Not Exhaustive List

Today, a friend of mine posted a status update on Facebook about a pet peeve of hers. That got me thinking about my own pet peeves, of which I'm afraid that there is an inordinately long list.

Back before Facebook, these lists of questions would go around via e-mail to help you know more random details about your friends. Oh, sure, we know the important things about our friends: whether they're honest, loyal, and can be relied on in a real crisis. That's what matters. But have they ever, say, won the Betty Crocker Future Homemaker of Tomorrow Award? (As my sister-in-law did in high school, just to teach her mother a lesson.) Or have they ever sky-dived? Or been to sub-Saharan Africa? What's their favorite color? What occupation would they pick if they weren't doing what they're doing?

To find out little details like this, people would think up a list of about 25 completely random questions and then would send the lists off to all of their friends, imploring them to answer them and then send them to all of their friends, as well as back to the original sender. You usually even got a chance at the end of the list to name which friend you thought would be most likely to answer you quickly and which one you would never hear from at all.

I was always named as the friend from whom none of my friends would ever hear back when they sent those lists. I hate that my friends found me unreliable in answering their random questions about me, but the truth is not what they thought. They probably thought that I felt like this activity was too frivolous to take up my time; that I felt myself to be above such an activity. That was not the case. The truth was that I do not answer questions well, especially with short answers. I could have gone on at length in answering any of these questions. I also don't answer questions well because I always come back with questions of my own. I have to qualify and quantify your question before I can answer it correctly. Finally, I have to give a lot of thought to my answers to these questions. Some of them—sent years ago—I'm still thinking about to this day. I'm a muller of questions, which is why I don't fill out forms very well. I have to think about it, then ask you a lot of questions about exactly what you're trying to get at with your question, then think some more about your answers, and then, several days later, I might have an answer for you. By then, you'll have forgotten that you sent me this silly little questionnaire, and you will wonder if I'm not a bit dim, coming in so late, and with such serious answers, to something that was just meant to be kind of a light-hearted ice breaker.

Ah, but I've digressed.

The reason that pet peeves made me think about those old e-mailed ice-breaker questionnaires is that one of the questions on the list would often be “What is your pet peeve?”

And I would think, “Pet peeve? As in singular peeve? I only get one?” And this would send me into a reverie—that would last for days—of trying to come up with my top, number-one, most annoying pet peeve EVER. I found that I could not limit myself to just one, and thus, I could never get back to the question asker with an answer.

So, here, today, I'm going to list some of my pet peeves. Not my top ones, perhaps. These are just some that I'm going to think up as I go along. And I'm going to give myself 10; way more than one, yet not so many that I end up looking like a really peevish person (ha!). So, don't go thinking that these are necessarily my biggest pet peeves, they are merely the ones that will occur to me over the next few minutes.

1. When people take up two parking spaces to protect their cars from dings.
2. Bad driving. Which is to say, driving that is different from mine. Actually, other people who drive like me around me also annoy me. (And to those who will feel compelled to comment on this, I'll beat you to the punch: YES, I know that my driving is a pet peeve to all of my family members, all of my friends, and pretty much everyone else on the planet. Just so we set that straight right here: I'm clear on this.) 
3. But ESPECIALLY, people who get in the left lane on the highway and stay there, regardless of how slowly they are going in comparison to other drivers and/or how long a line of cars has built up behind them (which should be their clue that they are not going fast enough in the “fast” lane). Okay, the truth is, I have too many driving-related pet peeves to be able to list them all here. I need a special list just for Driving Pet Peeves. So I won't list any more of them here. 
4. I would like to say that one of my pet peeves is mean people. What I mean is, people who are mean. The problem here is that I'm sometimes the mean person in an exchange and I'm sometimes the hapless victim of a mean person. So what I really mean when I say that mean people are my pet peeve is that when people are mean—except for when the mean person is me, in which case you should just excuse me because I am probably having a Bad Day—I hate that. But if I've been mean to you, I apologize, and I hope you understand that I've just had a Bad Day. 
5. Mean People Suck. The bumper sticker. Yes, mean people do suck. But, see item above. If you are willing to admit it, as I did, you are probably sometimes a bit mean yourself. And even if you're not, isn't a bumper sticker with which you tell some people that they suck kind of, well, mean? Or are you one of those people who thinks it's okay to be ugly toward someone if they were that way toward you first? 
6. Sand stuck all over me. I love the beach. I hate having sand stuck to every inch of my skin. It makes me want to dive into the ocean to get it all off. But then it will just restick to me on my way back to my beach towel. Which will make me want to go back into the ocean. Which will make it restick.... 
7. Okay. I realize that not everyone is born with a gift for doing well in English class. I really do get that. Those people should realize that, if they are going to have a blog, or even post much on Facebook, that they should really make the effort to learn a few things to keep from tipping the rest of us (the literate world, that is) over the edge. Again, I really don't mean to be picking on people who just aren't that good at language skills, as I have my areas in which I'm not gifted, too. The thing I would most like for those people to learn is the proper use and placement of apostrophes in English words (and note that I didn't say apostrophe's. Its and it's; there, their, they're; your and you're. They each have their own place in the English language, please do not treat them as if they are interchangeable. I won't even go on about your spelling if you will just work on your apostrophes. Okay? 
8. The word “utilize.” I just think that there is no place where people employ the word “utilize” where “use” wouldn't sound better and less like you're trying to make things sound complicated. 
9. People who can't count to 15. Whom I only notice or would even say anything about because I get behind them in the express lane at the store, with their—oh, I don't know, maybe—28 items! Oh, wait. Maybe they can count properly. The problem is, they can't read the sign that clearly says “15 items or less.” (What the sign actually means, of course, and we will be kind to the sign-maker, who had limited space in which to write, was “15 items or fewer.”) 
10. Babies crying loudly in public places, especially in restaurants where I am simply trying to have a nice, relaxing meal. Yes, I know that this makes me a horrible person—to say, out loud, that I hate crying babies—but there you have it. I do. I actually don't hate the baby, just the crying. The sound of a baby's cry can just send me over the edge. It completely derails my brain from whatever thought process it was having. I just can't abide that sound. So, please, little babies, stop your crying. And, please, baby parents, if your baby persists in crying in public for, let's say, 10 minutes or more, take that baby home! It's what he or she needs. It is you who wants to be at the restaurant. Do what your baby needs, not what you want. Take that kid home and put him or her to bed!

I am going to stop here today. That's because I think that it is petty and, well, peevish for a person to 1) go on at length about her pet peeves (ha!), or 2) be able to name more than about 10 in one sitting. One should not nurse one's peeves. One should work at not having any peeves rather than nurturing the peeves that one does have. We should strive to be a peeveless people, holding no grudges and judging no one, in spite of how rude, illiterate, or annoying they might be. You can see that I am working on this. But the truth is, I really can't come up with more than 10 at one time. This is probably caused more by a lack of concentration on my part than it is a lack of peevishness.