Pet peeves - everybody has them. They can be simple or complex, important or trivial. Some are easy to tolerate while others make the hair bristle on the back of your neck.
Some even are so maddening they can cause persons affected to completely lose control. There are even those which madden the observer to the degree that it can become dangerous either to the perpetrator or the recipient.
I have my share. People who know me know my pet peeves very well. They rise to the surface spontaneously.
I shudder when, after reacting to a peeve, mymantra has come across belligerently. It is then I give myself a lecture and vow to reform. You know what I mean, but bad habits are hard to break.
Perhaps the most visible pet peeve of mine is when driving in the rain, fog, early morning or the twilight before dark and I meet a vehicle with no lights. Sometimes I react by flashing my lights; often I just mutter something to myself. Sadly, I sometimes notice that I have failed to turn on my own headlamps (the old Blazer’s came on automatically, the later model doesn’t). It’s then I lecture myself to be more patient with other forgetful drivers. Too often, though, my patience takes a back seat.
Another pet peeve is receiving change from a cashier when the clerk hands me a couple of dollar bills, a receipt and then piles several coins on top. I fumble as I accept the mess, often spilling a coin on the counter. Sometimes I reach forward, grab the bills with one hand and hold out my other hand to receive the small change. Gone are the days when clerks counted out bills and change. Once in a while there is the exception. Bless the exceptional.
A constant pet peeve are the television commercials. When you’re as stubborn as I am in refusing to get a hearing aid, it’s really peevish of me to have the volume set for voices in a program and then, at a break, have the speaker blare out some guy shouting unimportant gibberish while trying to act cool with fake smiles or phonygestures. An even bigger peeve is the blare of trumpets, outlandish jingles or background music that force themselves to an even louder ear-damaging pitch. I grab the zapper and turn the volume down, only forced to reverse the action moments later when the important program restarts.
Which brings me to another TV peeve: Background music in documentaries, so loud that the crescendo of cymbals and oompahs of tubas, or even an inordinately loud background sonata or run on a keyboard, overpower the words of the narrator. Bah, humbug. Don’t those who add the sound effects have a clue?
There is one other pet peeve which I imagine is common to every reader: the daggum blasted telemarketers who call at the most inappropriate times, like when, at the dinner table with a mouthfull of good home cooking, the phone rings and a voice shrills, “This is your captain speaking,” or something about credit cards or car maintenance insurance.
One final pet peeve is when someone leaves a message on an answering machine. They either talk too fast or mumble, don’t identify themselves and, when they do, leave an unintelligible phone number to call. I wish they would repeat the number a couple of times, slowly. I need to remember this!
Do you have a pet peeve? Drop me a note at the Eagle Observer or email me at [email protected]. They could make an interesting column. We won’t identify the sender, but please include your name.
Now to a most important part of this ‘Cuff: As you may or may not have read or know, I was the recipient of a nice plaquenoting my 60 years in the newspaper business - most of it at the former Gravette News Herald.
I want to thank each of you who mentioned it with nice words of congratulations and notes. I also want to say a personal thanks to each of you who have put up with my rantings for these many years, have had patience with my impatience, have understood and overlooked my mistakes, and especially you who have supported the paper as well as me during this long tenure.
And to those for whom I have worked and with whom I have worked go my inadequate words of thanks for the support and especially the friendships that have made it all worthwhile.
Dodie Evans is the editor emeritus of the Westside Eagle Observer and may be contacted by email at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 08/07/2013