dancingthroughchaos

I don’t have pet peeves, I have whole kennels of irritation – Whoopi Goldberg

It’s my birthday month: hurrah!  I haven’t yet reached my next significant milestone, but it’ll be along before you know it.  

I have it on good authority that the older you are the more outrageous you can be. 

I have toyed with the multiple possibilities this offers me; of throwing social mores out of the window and entering a new season of carefree living.  This apparently includes wearing whatever you want, regardless of conventional ideas on colour and/or pattern combinations (look out for vivid tartan/polka dot unions coming soon); the freedom of not feeling compelled to explain yourself, justify yourself, prove yourself or modify your volume when sharing unsolicited opinions in public spaces.  Observational experience suggests that this all comes with a free pass for complaining about people, things and situations with more than usual merry abandon.  

I am not actually convinced about this. I don’t believe older members of the population should think it’s OK to get away with bad manners and grumpiness any more than other demographic groups. Not only does it give us a bad name but young people resent it.  No; not just young people.  Everybody. 

Be that as it may, I have pondered on this theme for some time.  What are the things which really irk me; the things that carry me to the point of total exasperation? Here’s my top five; perhaps they overlap with yours:

1) Drivers who don’t signal at roundabouts 

This is an old bugbear.  You have to wonder what the driving instructors are teaching their wannabe road users.  I had it drummed into me that you not only give way to the right, but you clearly indicate at which junction you intend to exit.  Not too difficult one might think.  But, how often have you sat, waiting for a gap so you can join the circling throng, only to find that you’re thwarted by someone who in fact is turning left rather than going straight on?  Of course, this would have given you the perfect gap and you’d be happily on your way had they bothered to let you know.  But no; with never a backward glance, they trundle on quite unaware, and you are compelled to take a deep breath and wait all over again.  Conversely, there’s the car which is signalling left, so you begin to pull out into the line of traffic only to discover – as they almost take out your front wing – that he/she didn’t mean that left.  Thank you one and all. 

2) People who park across two spaces in a car park.

It’s bad enough to have your hopes raised, thinking you’ve finally found the perfect space, having driven in dizzying circles for some time, only to discover that a teeny tiny car is crouched there, dashing your ill-founded hopes.  But, if there is a space – or an ‘almost space’ – into which your car could have slotted, but now cannot thanks to the poor parking rubric of someone else – it’s quite maddening. 

3)   Not putting the right CD/DVD back in the right box.

If I had a pound for every time I’ve opened a case in the naïve hope that it will carry the item indicated by the cover, and subsequently had that shattered into disappointed fragments because some genius simply couldn’t be bothered to replace the correct item in the correct package, I would be a wealthy woman.  This is, surely, the precise reason we spend so many hours with our toddlers teaching them the order of the universal rainbow-coloured rings on that plastic spike, and the descending order of beakers in a stack. Things should fit correctly.  The right thing in the right place.  There is both method and logic to solving these practical riddles.  It’s all preparation for the challenges of adulthood, and we repeat it times without number because it will all be worth it in the end; or so we tell ourselves.   Perhaps I have staked too much on this; but really it shouldn’t be so hard.  Which parenting techniques did I miss to have failed so dismally?  Apparently, I sowed the wind and I am now reaping the whirlwind of disorder and chaos; except when it’s perpetrated by the husband, in which case it’s someone else’s wind (you know what I mean). but still my problem.  My offspring say I should switch to online streaming services immediately.

4)   Not replacing the loo roll.

I suspect this prompts a fairly universal throwing of hands up in despair.  Again; how hard can it be?  It causes me to wonder what they will do once we’re dead.  How will they survive without the loo-roll-fairy following behind and endlessly replenishing the supply of this vital commodity?  I can only conclude that they will struggle; but at least we will be missed.

5)  Facebook deciding which comments I’m allowed to see.

Here’s how this one goes: I find myself interested in some long thread of discussion to which several people have contributed (I see your doubt, but it happens).  Not all are displayed and so, being a methodical kind of girl, I click on ‘see previous comments’, to take me back to the start of the discussion.  Up pops a little message: ‘most relevant selected’.  How, in the name of all that’s good, does Facebook know which comments are most relevant to me?  It doesn’t; and it feels like the height of condescension for it to assume it does.  It’s the high-handed, ‘I-know-better-than-you’ patronising inference that makes my blood boil and my tranquility evaporate.  

Primal screams and clawing at the walls aside, I appreciate that in the grand scheme and context of global life, none of these things is desperately important.  My news feed could easily ratchet up my blood pressure in much the same way, or worse, before I even get out of bed if I give it too much attention.

In the meantime, I choose to enjoy the things in front of me right now and celebrate the passing of one year and the opening of another. 

My birthday treat will be to welcome one of my oldest and dearest friends to Cape Town tomorrow.  It will be her first trip here which brings its own excitement.   We have ten days of pure wonderfulness planned, during which I shall close this laptop and switch to holiday mode. 

I can choose to save all gripes and irritations for another day, or assign them to the bin forever.  After all, life’s too short to focus on such things for long.  Instead, I’ll take a breath of good African air, cut another slice of birthday cake and enjoy the shared laughter which the week ahead promises.

How about you?