by bsquared5@aol.com | Aug 22, 2016 | Thoughts
It’s the kiss of death: the eye roll accompanied by a muttered “she’s so annoying.” If you’re around teenagers at all, you probably hear it often. Everything, it seems, is annoying. Their hair, teachers, friends, homework, schedule, chores, siblings. It’s an endless list, and if you happen to parent one of these pleasant creatures, I don’t have to tell you that you often make the list’s Top 10 as well. Your rules, your music, the way you ask questions, whatever you choose to wear out in public.
Maybe it’s most obvious with that age group because they haven’t yet mastered self-restraint. While the millenials (a.k.a. Generation Me) may seem to captain the helm of narcissism and snark, this constant state of annoyance doesn’t rest solely with them. A brief scroll through social media reveals a smorgasbord of political, societal, and personal pet peeves. Everyone is annoyed by something! Which may explain last fall’s hype generated by the possibility of an eye-roll emoji. Because we needed more ways to convey sarcasm and superiority.
This trendy dismissive attitude even shows up in the way people (especially females) speak. One of my favorite examples is this clip from Faith Salie on the vocal fry used by young women. As she points out, each generation will always develop a way of speaking that is unique to them. It’s a way to set themselves apart from the other, presumably more annoying, generations. This current trend of vocal fry communicates a kind of apathy or cynicism that is apparently a means to appear chic. Ironically, it also sounds totally–well–annoying. Much like the toss-off “What. Everrrrr.”
I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is about the “that’s so annoying” refrain that bothers me so much. Sure, some things by definition ARE annoying: mosquitoes, pop-up ads, and that 2011 “Friday” song by Rebecca Black. But what is it that makes everything so annoying? At its heart, annoyance is a symptom of preoccupation with self. If it doesn’t suit me, my tastes, my needs, my desires, then it is beneath me and not worthy of my concern. When it comes to a persistent house fly, yes. When applied to another person, no.
Ask any middle schooler. There’s no faster way to be ostracized than for someone to declare you “annoying.” It seems more benign than “fat,” “ugly,” or “stupid,” but the label, usually delivered with a hair toss and eye roll, sets you in the category of the unseen, not even worth my notice. As a tween girl, it doesn’t get much worse than that.
Annoying is selfish. Rooted in pride, it conveys superiority, and unchecked, it slides easily into contempt. Contempt is a nasty beast. In a court of law it can land you a hefty fine or jail time because judges, at least, recognize it for what it is: disrespect. Contempt is the last stop on the train to dehumanizing someone and making it okay to wound them.
Pride and contempt, says CS Lewis, have been “the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” Recent research has found that the eye roll may be the number one predictor of divorce. Not that shocking given all it conveys to the person you’ve vowed to honor and cherish.
Annoying is a cowardly habit. It requires less of us. Annoying requires less compassion, less bravery, less personal change. It’s much easier to be dismissively cynical than to engage another person, to know them and give them grace. It requires nothing of me to dismiss with irritation any given political candidate and all his/her fans. It’s nothing to me to drive by the homeless guy and grouse about his laziness.
How many consistently annoyed people do you know who are happy? Are they fun to be around? Do you enjoy their complaining? The vicious cycle of everything and everyone being annoying is that eventually your annoyance becomes the very thing you despise–it makes you tiresome. And then it’s just like your Mama used to warn you: you keep making that face and it’ll freeze that way.
by bsquared5@aol.com | Sep 21, 2015 | Thoughts
Occasionally out here in the country, we encounter critters of various kinds: possums, foxes, the rare raccoon, and skunks. A few years ago, my husband and I were awakened by a high-pitched squealing punctuated by a smell so noxious our eyes burned. We (he) investigated and found nothing outside our bedroom window, but it could only be skunks. It was not so unusual. Almost every winter, we would smell skunk around the house or see one every now and then eating the beetles beneath the spotlight on the barn.
That winter, it was more frequent. Just when the awful stench had worn off inside the house, we’d hear the squealing again in the middle of the night and brace ourselves for the fumes that would follow. Finally, I called in the big guns, an extermination company that trapped and “disposed of” unwanted critters. (Highly recommend: Animal Pros.)
Maybe you saw our segment on the news? When they searched our home’s crawl space, they emerged wearing expressions of startled disbelief. We had skunks alright. They’d moved in like prairie dogs and set up a village under our house. 
It looked like they’d probably been using the space each winter for years because there was approximately 300 pounds of skunk poop under there. Nope. Not a typo.
Year after year, as they made themselves at home, they’d ripped into the crawl space structure, torn into the duct work, and generally partied like it was 1999. Night after night, we wore masks sprayed with lavender, slept upstairs away from the worst of the smell, and 
cursed the sweet images of the skunk from the movie Bambi that made us dismiss these creatures as mostly harmless. Live and let live, right? Until they turned our crawl space into Da Club with everything but the strobe lights. We were operating the neighborhood Polecat Brothel, with the smell apparently attracting others like a neon sign from miles away.
We trapped nine skunks. Nine. After the news segment aired, the neighbors got alarmed and trapped seven of their own. Each night, the guys would set the traps, baited with oatmeal cream pies (who knew?), and just about every morning another hungover skunk would be in there, blinking in the sunlight.
Meanwhile, to the tune of $15,000 (Nope. Not a typo.), we had to completely overhaul the crawl space. Guys in hazmat suits cleared everything out
(talk about Dirty Jobs!) and rebuilt our duct work. It was a miracle they hadn’t popped up through the floor vents and made friends with our cats.
It could’ve been worse. We heard about a family who had left for 2 weeks for an overseas adoption. Skunks got in through their vents and sprayed the whole house. When they returned, a new baby and toddler in tow, it was too toxic to breathe. It was like a house fire: a total loss. Clothing, furniture, sheet rock. Anything not under a glass surface (like pictures) was ruined. They razed the entire house and started over.
Also? I’ve read that the chemicals in their spray are flammable, so under just the right conditions, I guess we could have had little kamikaze flame throwers rutting around under our floorboards. Wouldn’t that have been toasty?
It’s human nature to justify, ignore, or deny. Whiny toddler? I’m too tired to deal with it. Sassy thirteen-year-old? She probably didn’t mean it. Two pieces of cake after dinner? What can it hurt, really? Snippy with your spouse? Whatever, man. Behaviors, habits, offenses pile up, and before you know it, you’ve got 300 pounds of you-know-what to shovel and stink that makes your eyes water.
It’s so much easier to take it a piece at a time and deal with things before they get ugly. I love Barney’s classic take on the issue in this clip: nip it in the bud! I don’t know about you, but this applies to so much in my life!
Not long after our skunk saga, we spotted one at the edge of our yard one evening. The whole family sprang into Level-10 lock-down. My son sent his all-terrain remote control car zipping after it while we offered guidance from a safe distance away. Confronted by the vehicle, it lumbered off, saddened, I’m sure, that we were no longer “open for business.”
At least I’ve got one thing under control. Now I’ve got to spray some WD-40 on my shears for some serious bud-nipping elsewhere.
