Some Things I REALLY Do Not Like

If it appears docile to you, you are easily deceived.

There are things in this world I do not like.  The list is far too long to share in its entirety in this forum, but I will highlight at least a few of the very banes of my existences. I shall not refer to my list of dislikes as pet peeves, as first of all, I dislike the term, and secondly, I don't think the term fits what I'm talking about here. Pet peeves are little things that get under your skin and annoy you. Sometimes they annoy you for very good reason, yet still are sufficiently trivial that a genuinely rational person would not allow himself or herself to become worked up about them. 

An example of this sort of pet peeve would be my Aunt Celine's Number One Pet Peeve of all time, which is sentences that end in prepositions. Just how hard and fast a rule the "don't end sentences in prepositions" directive is or ever was is very much in debate, anyway. Beyond that, unless one is an English teacher, who gives a flying rat's a-hole? Aunt Celine's youngest child has a case of diaper rash that, upon a casual glance, more closely resembles shingles or jungle rot, fire engines are  at least once every six months dispatched to Aunt Celine's address because she's left the house for lengthy intervals with vile concoctions baking in her oven  that were, if the truth were to be known, probably unfit for human or canine consumption even if cooked at the proper temperature, and her eldest child is being formally adopted by other members of the family because she has refused to speak to him because he returned from his LDS mission eight months early due to an intestinal condition that cost him several feet of his large intestine and almost cost him his life, yet Celine is bothered that the next door neighbor's child said to her, "You can't come inside our house. My parents said that when they're not home, no one except the family is allowed inside."  

Another example of a pet peeve would be that of a person who has a particular problem with something along the lines of  a woman (or man; I don't wish to be sexist or to assume anything here that I shouldn't)  applying lipstick or other cosmetics in places where Miss Manners or others of her ilk would say cosmetics should not be applied. Perhaps it is true that it's a breach of etiquette to touch up one's lipstick in church. (Then again, perhaps it is not. I don't actually know because I don't care.) But for the sake of argument, let us agree that lipstick should not be applied or reapplied in church.  If a person goes against that rule, precisely who is being harmed by the practice?  The person who applied his her her lipstick? If so, he or she interfered with the quality of his or her own worship; it would seem that the matter would be between himself or herself and God.  If the depth of another congregant's worship were so transient that the mere view of a person applying lipstick inside the sanctuary of a church  caused the viewer to lose his or her spirit of reverence or otherwise lose his or her connection with the deity, it would seem that the person's connection with the Father. Son, and Holy Ghost, or whichever members of the standard Godhead that  one professes to sanctify would have to be classified as tenuous at best.  While most of us would agree that, while in a public place, pulling one's full Mary Kay cosmetics tray from one's handbag and going through one's complete beautification routine, from exfoliating to clarifying to concealing to all the other steps the Patron Saint of Cosmetics has deemed to be essential, might be considered a slight faux pas as well as a mild act of eccentricity. Still, unless it happened to be disrupting a presentation or process (I cannot imagine it being allowed in a courtroom, for example) or otherwise taking attention away from a person who held the floor, few of us would care very much about it  beyond mentally questioning the level of  civility or refinement of a person who would engage in such behavior.

My list is of something entirely different than pet peeves. I could fill a book longer than the Book of Alma (the longest book in the Book of Mormon, for those of you who are lucky enough not to know that) with things that I very strongly dislike in terms of foods, but in the interest of making a somewhat uninteresting post even less interesting, I'll limit myself to two item related to food. If the list ends up including more than two items related to food, I'll come back and edit this part of the post to reflect that number, and no one will ever be any the wiser. How I would have hated being a blogger back in the dark ages of typewriters.

I very strongly dislike mountain lions. Call them cougars. Call them pumas, Call them house pets. Whatever they are, I don't like the things. I shall go so far as to commit blasphemy by suggesting that gd screwed up when he created mountain lions. I understand the life cycle and the balance of nature and that if there were no mountain lions, there would be too much of something else that would possibly be even less desirable than mountain lions. I think God should ponder the issue very seriously. I think He could come up with something other than one of the two creatures that prevents me from even spending a night in the outdoors again as long as I live.  The other creature keeping me out of the wilderness at night is the bear -- mainly grizzy, but black bears [who aren't necessarily black; that's just their name] are scary to me. yet for some probably irrationally reason, I'm not so grossed out by bears as by mountain lions. I wouldn't care to come face to face wit either of them, but if one were allowed to remain on the planet while the other were to be sent elsewhere, i'd keep the bears and send the mountain lions away. Far away.  I don't like wolves or coyotes, either, but we just don't see quite so many of them around here, so they're less of a vexation to me. If they start appearing more frequently in my neck of the woods, they, too, could end up on my list.


I do not like those pencils into which you insert the lead -- I think they're known as mechanical pencils.I cannot be convinced that they're in any way superior to  standard pencils. I don't want to use them.  Where they're concerned, I'm capable of minding my own business . . . to a  point. I've spent a few of my days off working as a substitute teacher. As a teacher, I despise those mechanical pencils with a passion that most people reserve for serial killers and people who drive with blood alcohol level in excess of three times the legal limit.  Students of all ages who have mechanical pencils spend so much time messing with them -- partly because the devices malfunction on a regular basis but partly just because they're there to mess with  -- that they almost never get any work done, and often those students messing with the mechanical pencils manage to distract other students from matters upon which they should be focused, although what could cause  a mechanical pencil to be exciting enough to distract a person from anything is, to me, one of life's great mysteries. Simple things for simple minds, I suppose. hen I subbed, I gave one warning to the class about mechanical pencils. After that, if I caught any kid using one for anything other than writing, i took it away until the tnd of class and gave him a boring yellow  #2 pencil to use in its place.

I do not like my food to touch. My mother has an issue with this one. She'll make some smartass remark like "the flour and the eggs are touching in that cookie you're eating. How can you eat it? You don't like your food to touch!"

Or my grandmother will make her favorite response to my quirk, which is, "It all mixes together in your stomach, anyway."  Once when she said that, my Uncle Michael, who has a stomach of steel, mixed all of his food together on his plate -- just stirred it up as though his fork was a makeshift Cuisinart -- then proceeded to eat every bit of it, making my grandmother gag.  

"What's wrong, Mom?" he asked her. "It all mixes together in your stomach, anyway." My grandmother never again complained to me about my not wanting my food to touch.

I'm not an absolute nutcase about it. My maple syrup can touch my pancakes. A salad can have lettuce and cucumbers and whatever -- as long as it's not anything too weird -- and I'll eat it.  But if I have spaghetti on my plate, I don't want my bread touching my spaghetti. Actually, I don't want my bread touching anything. My taco can have meat in it, meaning the tortilla and the meat can touch. I may occasionally even allow a bit of cheese in my taco. I don't however, want my lettuce in it. I'll eat the lettuce separately. Most casseroles are massive instances of food touching each other, which means mostly I do not eat them. If i'm at someone else's house for a meal, and the food touches each other,  I play with my food and make it look as though I'm eating in order to avoid offending my host.

I do not like TV commercials about sensitive subjects.  My mom said it was really embarrassing when feminine hygiene products first began to air commercials on TV. A girl might be watching TV with a date when all the sudden, along came a commercial about panty shields with wings that fly would right up a girl's legs and protect her underwear.  It was probably almost as embarrassing for the boys as it was for the girls. One time following such  commercial, my mom's date actually asked her what was the difference between a pad and a tampon. Now she would probably grab a note pad and draw a diagram for the guy, but she was more reticent when she was seventeen.  My grandfather wondered through the living room at the time; he told the kid to ask his mother if he was really that curious. And now all those sexual enhancement drugs must have their moments of air time. I like the parts about if a guy has an erection lasting more than four hours, he should seek medical attention.  I always though it was one of those disclaimer put on the box and in the commercials just because it's theoretically possible,  sort of like the disclaimer on the box of one of the old desktop model computers my parents bought. It said the computer should not be used in a shower stall when the water was running. Some idiot somewhere must have done that once, and then tried to sue because the instructions never specified NOT to use the computer while taking a shower. I assumed the Viagra or cialis or whatever enhancement drug it was put that disclaimer there just in case someone really did have a four-hour erection, though they knew it would never happen. Guess what? It did happen. I can share this because I saw it as a patient in an ER waiting room recently and not as a physician -in-training, which means I'm not violating any laws of confidentiality. I don't know the guy's name and didn't pull out my cell phone and snap a picture, so it would be difficult for me to commit any major HIPAA violations here. Anyway, from the looks of things, this guy must have been one of he ones with an erection lasting for more than four hours. It's for real, folks! The poor guy appeared to be in absolute agony.  Even though I really needed to be seen pronto, I asked the nurse at the desk to take him first, PLEASE. I couldn't stand to watch it in progress any longer.

There are more things I REALLY do not like, but I must go to work. Some poor soul's sternum is waiting to be sawed open, and I need to be there to catch every detail of the action.