I am a simple man with few opinions and a propensity for rarely getting frustrated or impatient. Here’s a tiny list of a few things that should make it on every caring, thinking human’s pet peeve list.
People who buy gigantic, shiny-new trucks, but aren’t skilled enough to park them in a single spot in prime parking real estate.
Pet peeves I’m adding in 2022
People who eat breakfast cereal with their hands, and then keep spilling on the floor, and I’m working on it.
When people leave their iPads lying next to a toilet.
When my G2 gel pens run out of ink, and when they get stolen out of my pocket, and when they disappear again and again.
Pet peeves I’ve added in 2020
Trying to use the bathroom for sixty seconds without any assistance or company and having a one-year old wonder in and start organizing the family’s toothbrushes. On the floor. By the toilet.
The confident tone of people who have suddenly become experts on pandemics because they watched a discredited documentary about a discredited scientist talking about COVID being a giant conspiracy.
Pet peeves for December
When people buy expensive Christmas wrapping paper. When people buy non-recyclable Christmas wrapping paper. When people buy Christmas wrapping paper. Come on. If you have comic books or newspapers or brown paper and string then you’re set.
When you run out of whipped cream. That should never happen in December.
When people make fun of cheesy Christmas movies. Get over it and go watch Die Hard if you’re going to rob people of their one-month a year Hallmark traditions. Yes, I will probably watch Christmas Switch again this season. And then John McClain.
When you buy cheap Christmas lights and the bulbs don’t even last ten or twenty years.
When people act like you’re supposed to play Christmas music and nothing else. No. A bit here, a bit there, and loud. But December deserves to have music other than holiday tunes in it too.
Pet peeves for July
When you’re carrying a full cup of coffee and you trip down seventeen stairs onto a concrete floor twice in the same week. Don’t do that.
When I’m around others with young children and the parents are wearing clothes that are inexplicably free of food stains, vomit stains, pee stains, and poop stains.
When a coffee shop tells you they’ll gladly let you pay for a refill, for the special rate of a full-price cup. Sort of like a ‘buy one for $3, buy two for $6.50.’ Sort of.
When Netflix launches another show that looks fascinating and I’ve already got 4,500 hours of programming to catch up on.
When your pet goat refuses to obey, which is most of the time.
When it takes me more than fifteen years to remodel our house.
When people waste precious minutes of my life trying to convince me to switch from an iPhone to something else.
When I’m too late to the theatre and miss all the good trailers.
When I’m too early to a meeting, sermon, or such and don’t miss all the lead-ins, preambles, and requests for money or volunteers.
When people use a non-serrated knife to cut tomatoes.
Every single ridiculously-dull knife that Spaghetti Factory includes with their almost-unsliceable bread.
People who only listen to the same music they listened to in high school and then try to defend how it’s better than any of the new junk that’s out.
When I have to reheat the same cup of coffee in the microwave more than three times.
When I go to make myself the world’s best cup of coffee and when I taste it I realise it doesn’t even crack the top five.
When people shorten my name without my consent. Consent not granted.
People who don’t care about grammar.
People who care way too much about grammar and exalt it over a good story or great writing.
People who get angry when I split infinitives. Which I do frequently and deliberately.
When I leave a twenty in the tip jar instead of a George Washington, unless it’s a certain restaurant and I have intentionally done so for my buddy Rachel, in which case I would probably just do something better like break her car window and tape the 20 to her steering wheel to ensure it made it.