10 Peeves

I consider myself to be a positive person but I suspect that I am peeved more often than most. I mean, I did create this list of things that bother me. Super positive people probably don't create such lists. Or if they do, their list probably isn't 301 items long. And their list probably doesn't rhyme. Actually, 301 isn't even the extent of my pet peeves in life. There are MANY more that I either didn't remember at the time or just couldn't find a rhyme for. In honor of the 10 on the 10th theme, here are 10 more things that bother me that didn't make the original list.

10 Recent Peeves

1. Getting a grounder. This is not a baseball reference. A grounder is a special species of zit. If you don't know what I'm referring to, consider yourself blessed and pray to Jesus that you never experience the hell that is a grounder. But so you can sympathize with me, let me explain.

A grounder is a zit that lurks beneath the surface of your skin and is roughly the size of a small marble. My most recent offender was on the chin. These guys are not only eyesores, they are painful. Hard as rocks it is tempting to squeeze the sucker to shrink it down fast. However, no pus will ever squirt from a grounder. No, no such satisfaction will be found. If you squeeze, all you'll find is clear liquid that oozes out. And if you do attempt to drain the grounder, you will be rewarded with a giant dime, sometimes quarter-sized scab on your face. Covergirl can do little to help in these situations. My poor brother used to get these right between the eyes. We called him Cyclops.

2. Getting a pedicure and choosing a bad color. If I'm forking out the big bucks for a pedicure, it means my nasty toes are going to be seen in public and I'm trying to mask their abnormal length with a pretty color. Few moments are worse than looking down after a pedicure to discover the pretty "spring purple" you envisioned actually looks like it's straight from your grandmother's collection. No offense, grandma. Even if you notice the poor color choice after just one toe is painted, there's no turning back. If you are the type to stop the lady and request a change, I applaud you. You are freaking ballsy.

I don't ever want to get on the bad side of the ladies in those salons. I'm not exactly sure why but they intimidate the heck out of me. I'm already refusing their five dollar flower and they're already very disappointed in me for refusing the callus removal that apparently I so desperately need. So I can only imagine what would happen if I were to make a color change request. I'm assuming harsh words in Vietnamese would be spoken and lots of dirty looks would be involved. Thus, I have ugly toes for the next few weeks.

To make matters worse, the day after my pedicure was "A Day Without Shoes" at school so all my students saw my old lady toes.

3. Being asked if I'm okay. This is fine if you see me crying or lying on the floor in pain. But if there are no tears involved and I don't appear to need an ambulance, don't ask me if I'm okay. Ask me how I'm doing. When you ask, "Are you okay?" I hear, "Wow, you look miserable. What on earth is wrong with you?" If I'm having a great day and nothing is wrong, this question makes me slightly paranoid.

This peeve is right up there with people telling me to smile. "Dude, I might be thinking about the people in Japan right now. You don't know what's going through my head. I'm not going to feign happiness for your sake, so keep your smiling commands to yourself."

This post is starting to make me sound more cynical and negative than I am. I do smile. Quite often actually. But sometimes I don't and I hate when people command me to.

4. Getting a terrible song stuck in my head. Barbie Girl is a repeat offender but the most recent tune that would not leave me alone was Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me." If you don't know the chorus, consider yourself lucky. If you do, you can understand why it was inappropriate for me to be humming this tune in my classroom. How these songs ever are recorded and put on the radio baffles me.

My first year teaching I had a student who entered the classroom every single day singing Cher's, "If I could turn back time..." because I made the mistake of telling her that I hated that song. I know no other lines. Those six evil words would spin in my head all day long. It was a very cruel joke.

5. Carrying a giant load of laundry up and down the stairs. Whites are the worst. Inevitably I'll drop 7 socks along the way and each time I try to bend down to retrieve it, another one will jump out of my arms. I'm pretty sure they've planned this.

6. Hearing my neighbors roll out their trash cans. Could these be any louder? Does anyone else experience a tiny heart attack every time this happens? It sounds like a peal of thunder breaking loose out of nowhere and always makes me jump and gasp and thus, feel like a fool.

Luckily, it's typically only my cat who witnesses me getting scared and she understands. The other day I turned the corner and almost ran into her. We both jumped. I tried to laugh about it with her but she ran away.

7. When kids write "idk" on a quiz. Yeah. It happens. More often than you'd believe. Not only have they shown me that they aren't retaining anything I've taught them, they are using their texting language to reveal that they have no concern whatsoever about grammar or the English language in general. This quiz however, despite the spelling error, was given half-credit for creativity and skill because the self-portrait is shockingly accurate:

8. Commercials during March Madness. I watched quite a bit of basketball in the month of March and beginning of April. I love 30 Rock but grew sick of Alec Baldwin and his Capital One commercial pretty quickly. Geico and Home Depot were other culprits that made me want to scratch out my eyeballs.

9. Getting locked out of my classroom. Long story short, my classroom keys ended up inside the class while me and the entire class were outside. I hustled to the other side of campus to get a spare set and was given about 10 keys. This was a problem for two reasons.

1- I am terrible with keys. I can never quite get them to work and had to try 10 different keys while my whole class watched.

2- This set of keys didn't include the key to my room. I did what any cool, calm, and collected teacher would do and screamed and threw the keys to the floor. Then I marched away to find a janitor and told the class to be quiet and not disrupt the other classes. They laughed. Perhaps because I had just screamed in the hall.

10. When zippers do this: