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 |  Ohhhhhhhh. |
| That thing a certain type of conversationalist does when she wants you, the speaker, and anyone else listening to know she knows exactly what you're talking about. Where you're saying your thing, and she jumps in on the penultimate word, sometimes halfway through it, not meaning to be obnoxious but desperate to be recognized for her ability to guess what you were going to say. I couldn't believe she served the Welsh rarebit, you're saying, maybe, and she cosigns, simultaneously, with -sh rarebit, failing at synchrony but raising her volume to sort of overtalk you instead. Slightly more obnoxious, even, than when she guesses what you're going to say, and starts her own line of conversation deriving therefrom, not realizing she's guessed wrong. Eco-friendly cleaning products that smell like plants instead of smelling like, swoon, ammonia, which, when tinged with a bit of artificial lemon scent, is easily the most appealing thing about cleaning. Adults (the term I can't stop using to refer to people at least ten years older than I am, even now that I'm twenty-four) who, when they mean to learn more about my life, lack the imagination to ask me anything more probing than how school is going. Partly because it's always going terribly (yes, I get decent grades, and yes, it'll lead me into a lucrative career once it's over, but in the meantime, what about spending the best years of my life being made to feel like a moron in endless stuffy classrooms among hypercompetitive law nerds could be anything other than terrible?), but mostly because school only factors minimally, if at all, into my current definition of self, and how lazy to believe you'll ever know what I think and feel and believe by listening to me talk about Monday's legal research seminar. Probably if I were in the right field of study, which I'm starting to suspect that I'm not, I wouldn't feel this way. Terrible writers who self-publish. The other day, I had six bucks in my pocket and an hour to kill at a Barnes and Noble, so I bought a supercheap how-to book advertised as containing the seven keys toward improving one's own writing. I didn't really expect to learn anything, but I also didn't expect to lose count of all the dangling modifiers within the first two pages. It's just, I could do better than that. I could, I could, I could. Or if I couldn't now, I certainly could ten years older and wiser than I am now. And the only reason no one knows it is because I haven't. Which is my own fault, of course. Adults who correct other adults' usage and grammar. Guilty as charged. I can't help myself, and I know it is so, so annoying. Cap sleeves, because, please be honest, is anyone capable of wearing these things without their turning into deodorant swamps by the end of the day? Although, actually, I'm starting to think I might have a tic about sleeves in general, which would explain why I own an ethereal rainbow of tank tops and very few decent blouses. I do not do not do not enjoy the touch of fabric to my armpits. I'm not a big sweater, but I feel like the more fabric stimulates my underarms, the more I sweat. And I only feel secure with really cakey deodorants, which are probably responsible for the swamp situation. I've lost my five beach pounds this week and have persisted in staggering down to the gym even when I have that listless, haven't-eaten-yet feeling. I am eating, a lot, but I'm also stubbornly refusing to graduate to the next pants size. So I'm probably developing some sort of hybrid eating disorder, but thankfully, one of its symptoms is a pair of pretty great arms. Which, thank God, because I hate sleeves. Hipsters. And everyone else who buys into the horseshit that draping yourself in ugliness is cool. Lame! Menstrual cramps. How can we still be expected to abide something so primitively carnal? Sitcoms where the most frequently used joke is the one about how married women never want to have sex. And, relatedly, men who, with varying degrees of irony, go on and on about how everything about being married is so awful. Marriage is one of our society's most polarizing institutions, and you are allowed to opt out. People who have facial piercings or tattoos but are sensitive about being stared at. Again, you are allowed to opt out of having your face covered and filled with unnatural decorations. It would be nice, also, if you kept in mind that evolution has basically bred us to take kindly to things that are familiar and signify physical health, and to feel antsy about things that suggest disease and pain. Like holes through your body's most protective organ. Although, full disclosure, I let a stranger string an eight-millimeter needle through the northern ridge of my belly button. But you only get to see that if we're going to have sex anyway. Trying to get anywhere in conversation with pro-lifers. Which I'm sure goes both ways. * It's a big day when you finally realize what's probably obvious to wiser people: that life's greatest annoyances are the internal ones. I can hardly list my pet peeves anymore, which I'm often asked to, without including the ones that start with the words that thing I do when. That thing I do when I'm nervous. That thing I do when it's after ten and the boy hasn't called back. That thing I do when I want a friend to know she hurt my feelings, but I don't want to tell her. I irritate myself endlessly. But not quite as badly as that Welsh rarebit thing. |
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