Peeved

Oh, not really. Just thinking about some of my pet peeves. Like, I had this cold a couple weeks ago. And I am soooooo over it as the valley gals say. (I don’t really know if they say that.) As with most colds, at least the ones I get, I am still occasionally coughing. Occasionally. That’s once or twice a day. But people are still asking me how I am and if I am contagious, yada yada. No, I am not sick. People who are sick do not get up at 0-skunk-30 and walk 3-5 miles and then do a bunch of chores before they go to work. And NO, I am not contagious! Last I looked, it was common knowledge that viruses are normally at their most contagious stage *before* the symptoms appear. That’s how they pass themselves around. A related peeve is calling every little communicable illness “The Flu”. The common cold (like I just had) is *not* the flu and neither is spending the night in an intimate relationship with The Blue and Only Toilet. We are allowing so-called superbugs to evolve because so many of us insist on medicating every little garden variety communicable disease with antibiotic drugs and we are doing that because most of us do not understand the difference between bacterial illnesses and viruses and how all of that stuff works.

And do not talk to me about TV shows. I do not watch them. Well, I suppose you could talk to me about The Beverly Hillbillies or Lost In Space. I used to watch those religiously. When I was in third grade, my parents would let me stay up until 9:30 to watch TV *one* night a week. I chose the night The Beverly Hillbillies was on. When I was in tenth grade, my daily after school routine was doing my geometry homework in front of Lost in Space re-runs. With an orange and a bowl of potato chips as a snack.

Now? I don’t even know how to turn any of our rickety old TV sets on! I am not tuned in. I think I started to tune out during the 1991 Gulf War. I was “addicted” to the news for a while then. One day, my three-year-old figured out how to spell “OFF”, grabbed the remote control, and turned it off. This was after saying, “Moom, turn off the war”, more than a few times. Yes.

When people start talking to me about their fave TV show’s latest episode, my eyes glaze over. I’m sorry. I don’t think that I am somehow “better” than anybody else for not watching TV. I *have* watched it and I also allowed the Beach Urchins watch it pretty much whenever they wanted to (I also read to them a *lot*). I think there are probably some really good shows on TV. I just can’t usually concentrate on it. Same with movies. I do have Netflix and an iPad. I know how to download movies and TV shows and I enjoy doing that. When I get a round tuit. Which is rarely. As much as I wish I had more time to sit around and watch movies and TV, I also know that when I get to that point, it’ll be because I cannot get out and do all the stuff I can do now without help or a lot of tedious preparation.

To bring this random blather to some kind of end, this stuff is not pointed at any particular person. Lots of people over my whole lifetime have done this kind of thing, starting with my classmates at Lincoln School who would discuss the latest version of Bonanza over a game of 1-2-3 O’Leary (or whatever it was). Just that I much prefer talking to people about what’s going on in their lives. How are your kids/parents, etc. Job or job search? Where are you from? How did you get here? In your life, I mean. Is that kind of stuff just gossip? Or is it what makes the world go ’round? What you do you think?

4 Responses to “Peeved”

  1. Margaret Says:

    I don’t watch much TV either–Ashley got me hooked on Modern Family and if the TV is on and there’s either Law and Order or Law and Order SVU, I end up on the couch for an hour. I have friends who discuss all the latest shows and even a couple who (while we’re out having a drink) talk about some rich wife reality show. I don’t even remember the name of it except that it sounded INCREDIBLY STUPID. I would rather read, run, work out in the yard when weather permits, go out for coffee and discuss life. But you already know that about me. 🙂

  2. jane Says:

    I have a cough that sort of comes and goes. I have a name for it. ‘winter’.

  3. jane Says:

    also – regarding TV. I’ve never watched Jersey Shore, but did read something quite humorous about it —

    ‘A book commits suicide every time you watch Jersey Shore.’

  4. gene Says:

    I stopped watching TV during the first Gulf war because they showed the same scenes every day. I was watching the news in those days.