Monday, February 14, 2011

Irritating Experiences

So I'm Just Jane. I'm starting a blog way later than just about everyone on the internet. This irritates me because I am a writer and should have been blogging long ago. Then again "they" say you should never dwell on what you should have, could have, would have done. Good advice, but hard to follow.

I'll be blogging about whatever topic strikes me on any particular day, topics to which everyone can hopefully relate. I invite comments and look forward to posting back and forth with anyone who wants to talk. Which brings me back to my topic for today, irritating experiences. It drives me crazy to see the English language butchered. I literally cringe. In the previous paragraph I wrote about should have, could have and would have. Did you know there are people out there who think it's correct to write "should of," "could of" and "would of?" I don't pretend to have a complete command of the English language, but this is just wrong! My skin crawls thinking about it.

I just got back from a particularly irritating trip to the grocery store. I was bringing in a bag of soda cans to recycle when a woman with a grocery cart full of cans eases me out to get to the recycling center first. So I wait. And I wait. And I wait. I finally get to the recycling machines and when I bring my deposit return vouchers to the customer service line to quickly redeem them, guess who is in front of me with a half full bag of off-brand bottles and cans that the machine wouldn't accept? This indicates that I will be waiting yet again for the same woman to make her case for the ineligible containers, and then count them out one-by-one for credit.

Before I could get totally irritated with her, I notice the woman in front of her is buying 50 or so gift cards and the store clerk has to ring up each of the cards and activate them individually. All this time my dog is in the car, because I thought I'd be in and out. My tolerance level is at zero now and after two or three people then backed up behind me, I gave up. Three dollars in recycling vouchers was not worth this level of frustration. And now that I'm carrying the vouchers around with me, they will undoubtedly get lost before I get a chance to redeem them. At least the dog was happy to see me, which always cheers me up.

Then there's the paper boy, or paper man. Depending on how our two cars are parked in the driveway he chooses to bring the paper to the door, or leave it at the far end of our long circular driveway in a snowbank. It is a cold walk in the morning walking to end of that driveway in pajamas. He says he's afraid he won't be able to turn around if our cars are parked a certain way. Did I mention that we have a "circular" driveway? He doesn't have to turn around. He can simply drive around the circle and get the paper within at least 10 feet of the front door. Irritating.

I could go on, but that's for another day.

No comments: