Pet Peeves - A Rant

I don’t have many pet peeves, but the ones I do have… well, they really drive me nuts. I hate to admit that because they are probably pretty petty (oh, that looks so funny on the screen – pretty petty, pretty petty, pretty petty). Then again, isn’t that the nature of a pet peeve? It’s petty. I wondered, so I looked up the definition from answers.com. Here’s what it says:

• pet peeve n. Informal.
  Something about which one frequently complains; a particular personal vexation.

So, there you go. “Something about which one frequently complains.” Most things we complain about are pretty petty, and probably pretty much outside our realm of control. I can’t stop people from saying “I could care less”, when they mean they could not care less, no matter how often I correct said offenders. Pretty petty. But when I hear it, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard. (Do kids today understand that metaphor, what with whiteboards blanketing classroom walls these days? I doubt it.)

Other pet peeves of mine are equally as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. For example, it makes me crazy that more and more often I find grammatical and typographical errors in newspapers and magazines, even those of high regard. Where have all the proofreaders gone? Back in the “old days”, when I was in advertising and did camera ready newspaper ads and copywriting for businesses in Colorado Springs, real people actually proofread every article. We got proofs of our ads so we could make sure there were no errors. The people in these positions were educated. They knew the difference between lead and led. They knew that, though lead could be pronounced “led”, it didn’t mean the same thing as led and knew which version of the word should be used. Though a computer may know how to spell each word, even with so-called grammar checking turned on, many grammatical errors go undetected. As a result, we have newspaper articles talking about the children being “lead to safety.” As I typed that in MS Word, Word did not even put a green underline under that phrase because “lead” to safety and “led” to safety are both proper phrases, grammatically speaking. Word cannot look at the total context of the phrase and determine which version of the word should be used. Sadly, in these days of waning circulation, newspapers are making cuts right and left. Apparently, one major cut has been in the proofreading department. They are relying on word processors to catch spelling and grammar errors instead of humans. The result is far too many mistakes, even in headlines. Every time I see one in the Spokane paper, I want to send them an email asking them “what were you thinking?!” Another source of spelling and grammar errors is the scroll on the bottom of the cable news channels. The errors are laughable sometimes – and sad. Too many people simply cannot spell and don’t know proper grammar.

Fewer and less – there is less fat in something and there are fewer calories. Why does packaging continually shout at us from the grocery store aisles “Less Fat, Calories, Carbs”??? It’s fewer, people. (Word thinks it’s should be its…see how dumb it is? And this is what publications rely on for grammar checking?) We are talking about multiple things that can be counted, and the word is fewer, not less! Aaarrggghh! No wonder one of my favorite books is Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I’m definitely a grammar nazi, or snob. It’s sad.

Tailgaters, red light runners, non-signalers – those are my driving pet peeves. I really hate tailgaters. More often than not, they are teenage girls who are either talking on their cell phones, have a car full of other teenage girls, or are fiddling with their radios. They scare me. They are usually so distracted; I know there is no way on earth they would be able to stop in time if I had to come to a sudden stop. Just last night, on the way home from work, I had one on my tail. She was so close to me I could barely see her headlights, and we were traveling at 45 mph. I stepped on my brakes multiple times to try to get the message across to her. No reaction. Finally, I slowed to 25, drove at that speed for about 500 feet, then stepped on the brakes two or three times, and finally saw her hand go up as if to say “oh, okay, sorry” as she backed off. She still was following much too closely – about two car lengths instead of the four she should have been behind me by – but it was an improvement. When she finally turned off onto one of the side streets, she practically did so as if on two wheels. I hate to generalize, but my experience has been that teenage girls tailgate much more often than teenage boys. My own daughter was a chronic tailgater. She eventually had an accident as a result of it. She rear-ended a pickup truck because she was following too closely and couldn’t stop in time when he had to step on his brakes to avoid a motorhome who cut him off. She didn’t damage his truck, but she did about a thousand dollars in damage to her car. She was always fiddling with her radio, checking her makeup, or something other than paying attention to the distance between herself and the car ahead of her. She’s an adult now and no longer tailgates.

Red light runners are just plain dangerous. When we were in Spokane last weekend, we were at a stop light on Division, a major arterial. (Spokane is probably the nation’s capital for red light runners. It’s habitual there.) I could see the light had turned red for the cross street, meaning ours was about to turn green. Sure enough, here comes this small pickup truck from our left. He didn’t even hesitate. He floored it and flew through the intersection, through a blatantly red light. Thankfully, the left turn signals had not yet changed to green and no accident occurred, but it really was a miracle. I so wanted to call the cops on this guy. Too bad I was in the middle lane of 3 lanes or I might have followed him, gotten his license plate number, and phoned it in. Too many accidents have occurred in Spokane as a result of red light runners, and too many innocent people have died. These guys need to be taken off the road permanently.

Tom had an incident a couple of weeks ago that was really scary. He was in a line of cars going south on Highway 95 (the major north-south highway in Idaho). The light had just gone from red to green and it was taking the line of about 5 cars a few seconds to get moving. From behind him he sees this car flying up on him. The car moves into the right turn lane as if it is going to turn onto the cross street. Instead, the car punches it, flies through the intersection on the right of the line of at least 5 cars (this is a two lane highway), onto the shoulder alongside the front couple of cars, and then shoots out onto the highway in front of the front car. Where are the cops when you really need them? Maneuvers like that cause horrible accidents. Someone seeing this guy coming up on their right might swerve to avoid him, especially a young, inexperienced driver, and find themselves in oncoming traffic, causing a head-on collision and probably a multi-car pileup. Just such a move caused a deadly accident a couple of years ago not too far from where this idiot pulled his stunt. It’s scary. Tom has to drive this stretch of road 4 times a day.

Non-signalers are just plain annoying. You sit at a crossroad, or parking lot exit, waiting and waiting to cross the street or turn onto the street, and car after car after car either turns into the parking lot or onto the street you’re on, without signaling. Every time that happens, it’s a missed opportunity for you to actually get out onto the street, an opportunity you could have taken advantage of had the other car simply signaled their intention to turn. Either people simply are too lazy too flick the little signal activator in their cars, or there are a lot of cars with broken turn signals out there! I happen to live close to an intersection that is extremely busy and have to utilize it several times a week. In one direction, there are stop signs. In the other direction, there are none. You have to wait for a break in traffic so you can dart out onto the very busy street to continue your travel. Those breaks are few and far between. At least half the time, cars turning onto the side street from the busy one do not signal. It makes me crazy. Tom has to contend with this intersection about 4 times a day. He usually points to the front of their car as they drive by him as if to say “hey, your signal is broken.” The offending driver usually looks at him with an expression that says “what?” Sometimes they will even slow down and open their window to ask what he wants. He loves that. He’ll say “your turn signal is broken.” They’ll usually respond by saying “no it’s not.” He’ll gleefully respond by saying “well, then why didn’t you use it?!” The offender usually drives off shaking their head, assuming he’s just insane. I wonder if it changes their behavior at all.

Bloggers who don’t blog. Okay, that’s me. I have been really bad at updating lately. I’ve been super busy at work and at home for the past few weeks and blogging has taken a back seat. I’m going to try to remedy that. So stay tuned.

Enough ranting for one morning.