Pet Peeve #41 – Slow Walkers

Trying to walk down the street, through the mall, down the aisle in the grocery store and having to stop and manoeuvre my way through this slow mess of traffic really winds me up. I’m not even just talking about the elderly who are unable to engage the thrusters. I’m talking about people my age who just wander about with their head in the clouds as if they’re lost. Surely there is some purpose for you to be here? There is something you want, yes? That’s why you’re in a store, correct? Surely there are better settings for an aimless walk? Because I know you’re not here for exercise, slow as you’re going you’re probably getting more unfit. And the ones on the sidewalk, I can kind of understand it. It’s a nice change of scenery, you’re out to soak it all in. But what about just shifting up a couple of gears and burning a few calories while you’re out? Two birds, people!

                This peeve escalates when the single slow walker becomes a group. And even more when this group travels in a straight line taking up the entire aisle or sidewalk. Is it intentional? Is this some kind of game you go out and play to frustrate others? Or are you like a school of fish, just unable to leave each other’s sides?

                This gets exponentially worse when it translates to your golf game. You can’t play bad, play slow, and walk slow! What is that about!? It’s Sunday! There’s obviously people behind you that want to get a sweet 18 in and you’ve ruined it by the third hole.

                There are some remote places where slow walking is accepted; around in circles in your ward at the funny farm, from the shore deeper and deeper into the ocean, off a cliff, or even through traffic.

                Happy walking!

Friends With Benefits

It sounds like a good idea when you’re horny, but just how practical is this type of relationship? It is hard, though not impossible, not to develop feelings for the person you are sleeping with – even if it is only for a bit of fun to start with. You presumably find them attractive and can tolerate being around them for a fairly substantial period of time – there could be worse baselines. However, let’s just think about this situation before we commit.

                The girl/boy next door. Oh, what a fantasy! Hottie moves in next door and you eye each other off constantly, get caught accidentally on purpose, change with the blinds open. Will they? Won’t they? What a wonderful time, cool, playful. Wow you’ve just realized how short the walk of shame is, it’s all coming up Milhouse! You can have a few too many drinks and walk home. What more could you ask for!? Well, you could ask why they haven’t been getting home until 3AM every morning this week (you know this because you’ve been staring at their empty parking space) – way to play it cool, casual, no strings attached.

                If your FWB is an actual friend first, prepare for eternal awkwardness. These situations are meant to be temporary, but how can that be so if you are in the same friendship group and always around each other? How can you maintain the casual nature of the relationship when you are surrounded by, “So what’s going on with you and [so and so]?” That makes you think and thinking is not what FWB relationships are for.

                It may make you feel dirty, but getting up and leaving once you’ve taken care of business will maintain some emotional separation. Sleeping over and cuddling and having breakfast – that’s all for real relationships, leave that to the pros. Now there was an important phrase there – emotional separation – this means there are boundaries. So if you see this person out on a date with someone else, you are not catching them. They are allowed to do things like this, because while they are in a FWB relationship, they are still single.

                Please, please, use contraception. As I said, you guys are both single in this situation. Nobody knows how many other partners there are, how dirty or clean they are, whether or not they are safe with the other ones. You don’t want a baby or a disease from the person you are meant to be staying emotionally detached from.

                If you manage to do all these things – congratulations, you’re probably still going to fall for them. Accept it for what it is and move on because naturally at least one of you is going to catch feelings. This could be good or bad depending on the situation, but if a real relationship isn’t what you’re after, lay ground rules out from day one and don’t hang on to it longer than what feels appropriate.

Pet Peeve #40 – Verbal Texting

Texting was designed to be a quick and easy form of communication. Over time it has evolved into a preferred form of communication. Instead of people texting a short, sharp, quick, and easy, “what u doin 2nite?” they use text to send epic messages about thoughts feelings and emotions that would more easily and efficiently be communicated through voice. Anyway, through this evolution of texting from ‘convenient’ to ‘preferred’ it has formed its own language.

                As you can see in my example text above, texting originated with minimal punctuation and grammatical rules so we could shoot of a message in a matter of seconds. To save time, we have developed an extensive lexicon of acronyms; lol, wtf, lmao, rofl, brb, g2g, just to name a few. But now that we would rather text each other than talk to each other, these acronyms have crept into our everyday language (without further research, I want to say that many of these have actually been published in some brands of dictionaries). I am having real conversations with real people in which I actually hear the phrases ‘lol,’ ‘brb,’ and ‘wtf,’ more than I care to publicly announce.

                “BRB, I need to pee.”

                “LOL.”

                “It was like, legit LOLs.”

                “WTF, that’s crazy.”

                Stop it.