Knock it Off!
by Webb Williams
illustration by Gretchen Armbruster
Pet peeves, gripes, grumblings, rants, complaints, protestations, criticisms, outcries, beefs, grievances, objections, critiques, diatribes and such.
I’m an easy-going, happy-go-lucky, laid-back kinda’ guy who loves life and always thinks positively. I’m an optimist. I believe the glass is half full; my lovely pessimistic wife not only thinks the glass is half empty, but thinks there’s a chip on the rim and she’s certain she swallowed a piece of glass. Our opposites make for good yin and yang, but I firmly believe my approach is superior—and I’ll maintain that conviction until she reads this.
Perhaps it’s part of the aging process, but I find myself becoming more and more impatient with rudeness and idiocy. I seem to have more pet peeves than ever before. Here’s just a small part of what bugs me nowadays.
Driving That Drives Me Nuts
I notice more and more morons on the road who make rolling stops at intersections. They pull up to a cross street and before I get past them they creep and start rolling waaaaay in anticipation of my passing. It’s a dangerous practice of idiot drivers who must’ve gotten their licenses at Kmart.
Rap is bad enough—any song that you can’t hum the tune to bothers me. So when I have to listen to it on some kid’s mega-boom-boom car system, replete with profanities and language that would make Don Imus blush, I want to scream. Of course, the kid in the booming car (that dad probably bought) wouldn’t be able to hear me, so only sign language seems to express my frustration. I wonder how much damage those high volume levels do to kids in the long run. Think I’ll invest in hearing aid futures…
Slow-moving fast-lane road hogs who won’t get over in the right lane need to be stopped and shaken silly at the next Causeway crossover for all to see. Even tooting the horn or flicking your lights at them is ignored more often than not. They are a prime breeding ground for the following lunatics…
Tailgaters are one of the leading causes of accidents. Even if there’s no place you can pull over to get out of his way, this bully needs to be dealt with. I like to just maintain my speed and touch the brakes just lightly enough so the brake lights scare the dummy enough to soil his pants.
Some nut burgers drive as a secondary action. Reading newspapers, office memos, books or magazines isn’t really a good idea. Some years ago the Causeway printed a safety brochure and handed it out at the tollbooths. As soon as they realized where people were reading them, the practice was discontinued. A sign soon appeared warning, “DO NOT READ MATERIAL WHILE DRIVING.” It immediately occurred to me that the sign itself was “MATERIAL” and I was reading it. I turned myself in to the authorities on the other side of the bridge.
Many of us are guilty of using cell phones while driving, and, as if that’s not distracting and dangerous enough, I can’t get over people dining, grooming their hair and ladies applying makeup while on the road. All of those are good ways to end up “on the road,” all right.
Like, Dumbing Down the English Language, Like
All teen girls in America now speak Valley Girl. TV has relegated every region in the nation to speech patterns that should have been outlawed years ago. Parents could retire early if they charged their offspring a mere nickel for each time they uttered the word “like.” Oh, well, at least a favorite expression of my generation, “cool,” has made a resurgence. I guess “groovy” is out of the question since there aren’t any records with grooves around any more. What-everrrrr…
Dining out has its own set of language problems—especially with servers who ask my wife and me, “What can I get you guys?” You GUYS? Hey, pal, does she look like a guy to you? We’re in the SOUTH, where the plural of “you” is “y’all.” “You guys” can go up to New York and New Jersey, where “youse guys” works.
Another aggravating expression I run into in restaurants is “No problem.” If I’m asking, say, for a glass of water for the lady and the server says, “No problem,” I wonder why he or she introduced the concept of a “problem” in the first place.
It drives me nuts when someone in a badly written radio or TV commercial says, “And when they’re gone, they’re gone!” No kiddin’, bub. I thought maybe when they’re gone they’d still be there!
When someone feels the need to say, “To tell you the truth…,” it seems to me they’ve been lying all along.
It’s bad enough when insecure people try to elicit acknowledgement and response by constantly saying, “You understand?” But I lose it when someone says, “See what I’m saying?” I always remind them that they aren’t a cartoon with word balloons, so while I can’t see what they’re saying, I can comprehend their meaning as heard. And when somebody says, “In other words,” I run for cover.
Performance Anxieties
I don’t remember exactly where or when it first occurred, but appreciation for a musical performance today is expressed by a communal shriek. An ear splitting “WOOOOOOOOOO!” in the key of “D” sliding into “B” is now commonplace nationwide. Shut up and clap your hands already!
Performers who begin their act by asking, “How you feelin’?” might get a response from me like, “Well, thanks for asking: I think I slept wrong and my lower back aches a bit, but that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you. How you feelin’?”
Begging for audience participation runs rampant today. “Put your hands together” might find me with my hands clasped together as if I were praying instead of clapping. Applause should be earned, not bullied by the performer with “Make some noise!” or the ultimate aggravation, “Somebody SCREEEEAM!” Makes me wanna’ scream, “Get off the stage and put someone talented up there who’s not a damn cheerleader!”
Telephone Hang-Ups
It’s so aggravating to be put on hold and have to listen to some company’s soft rock, which is really an oxymoron. Of course, as bad as being put on hold is, being put on “forget” is even worse. I think all the time I’ve spent on hold should be added as bonus time at the end of my life.
I want to reach through telephone lines and grab the person by the throat when a pre-recorded on-hold program insincerely intones, “Your call is very important to us…” Yeah, right. That’s why you put me on hold in the first place, right?
And I really go ballistic when a company I pay for goods or services makes me jump through phone menu hoops. “Press 1 to pay your bill. Press 2 to order more stuff from us, etc.” Pressing anything except my pants is unacceptable, I’m sorry. If I’m calling for service I don’t want to hear a recording—I want to talk to an actual, live human being. And I don’t mean some poor soul in some third world country who just compounds my frustration by “helping” me in a thick foreign accent I can’t come close to understanding.
I don’t know what happened to the federal “Do Not Call List” that I signed up for, but I still get a lot of calls from someone trying to sell me something. I always say that I’m busy fixing my uncle’s time machine and can I get their number and call them back at their home later that evening. If it’s a female I ask them what they’re wearing. They usually hang up.
Shut Up and Listen!
My dad was a movie theater manager who would tell conversationalists in the audience something like, “Everyone paid to enjoy the movie, not your conversation. Please take it to the lobby.” It worked. Today TV in our homes has ruined civility at movies or musical performances. Many people rudely carry on conversations in theaters and at concerts at the same volume as they would in their own living rooms. Drives me nuts. Knock it off!
Cell phone users become abusers in restaurants when they yell as if either they have a bad connection or the party on the other end is hard of hearing. If they’d talk in a regular tone of voice, they’d probably be heard clearly, plus they wouldn’t cause so much indigestion. Shut up and eat!
Miscellaneous Laments
Kids have rebelled against parents and other authority figures since, um, since 1955 when James Dean starred in “Rebel without a Cause.” Well, maybe even before that, but today’s rebellious youth fall into the same trap of all previous generations of malcontents—they show their “dissimilarity” in the most unimaginative ways. They want to look different, but they all seem to adopt the same appearance elements of the herd: multiple tattoos and piercings in every nook and cranny, all black clothes, spiked hair, wacky colored hair and baggy pants that hang entirely too low. I think their rebellion should be more creative: hula skirts, clothes worn inside-out, red clown noses, dress shirts with ties tied in the back, baseball caps worn with the visor in front, etc. If you’re gonna’ be different, by golly, be different!
Dads are not all dolts as portrayed on TV. If you’ve lost the respect you deserve from your kids, remind them of the commandment that includes fathers, too. If that fails, tell ’em you’re gonna tell mama.
“Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers.” Know who said that? No, it wasn’t that guy who’s the mean old disciplinarian at your kid’s school. It was a feller named Socrates, around 400 BC. Doesn’t help much to know things haven’t changed in 2400 years. Bratty kids still make me want to say, “Knock it off!”
