I’ve been feeling kind of truculent lately, so let’s see if a list of five things I can’t stand will get it out of my system.
Let me begin with drivers behind me–when I’m up front at a stoplight, waiting to turn left at an unprotected left turn–honking for me to go ahead and make the turn already. I HATE that! They can’t see what I see, because they’re one car back. It’s incredibly rude and it just makes me want to stand there for a while, everyone behind me be damned.
Then hangers! I think I’ve mentioned them before. Can’t stand ’em. They always get tangled; the wire ones even get tangled on the rack. They make me want to SCREAM!
Did I say this was going to be a list of things I can’t stand? Well, change of plan. I am FURIOUS at the guy in the brown pickup truck who drove over a duck the other day in our subdivision. Yes, you know who you are, you JERK! Straddled it, and it was balled over and possibly hurt. This is a neighborhood. We love our ducks. When they decide to cross the road at school drop-off time, we wait patiently until they’ve reached the other side. If I see you drive over another duck, I’m getting down, so watch yourself!
And narrow lanes in some clothing stores. There should be space wide enough for a shopping cart to get through between two racks without pulling half the clothes off in the process. It’s claustrophobic. Or claustrophobia-causing. Whatever. And it’s greedy. And stupid. If you want to sell people stuff, you have to set it up so they can get at it as easily as possible. That might mean having a rack or two less in the store. Does that mean you’d sell less? I don’t think so. Because those stores that are crammed so full you can’t even move around properly–I’M NOT COMING BACK!
And last but definitely not least: When there’s been a disaster–man-made or otherwise–with lots of people injured and dead, there’s always someone with a story about how she was supposed to be right there when it happened, but something delayed her, and so she wasn’t hurt. And that it must have been God. That she was blessed to be spared. So what does that mean for the people who were injured or killed? God made the effort to spare you but he/she couldn’t be bothered with all the others? If only those people had been as blessed as you, this wouldn’t have happened to them? I know that most people who say these things don’t intend to suggest that they’re somehow special in God’s eyes, that they’re just grateful, but if you think it through–if you bring God into it that way, then that’s the only logical interpretation. I always find it an incredibly stupid, annoying and INSENSITIVE thing to say.
There. Now let’s see what happens tomorrow…
Resident Alien -- Being Dutch in America 
Good list. Especially the last. When I hear someone say that God spared them, it does seem that they are claiming that God decided that the “other people” were not worth saving.
If God really wanted to intervene and save lives, maybe He/She/It should have detonated the bomb while it was being built.
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Amen.
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OMG!!!! Let me say your last but definitely not least on your list would probably be my number one thing I can’t stand!! I have heard that statement so many times, and it makes me sick to my stomach every time. I’m thankful they missed being a victim of the tragedy, but their statement is, as you say, “incredibly stupid, annoying and INSENSITIVE!
The statement I’ve heard that I think is inexcusable is when I’ve had people tell me they prayed a bad storm away from their home. And yet the storm went on to do devastating damage to lives and homes. I think that person should now take responsibility and liability for the terroristic act they performed. When I’ve asked why they think they were more important to spare than the people who lost their lives or if God was willing to spare some why not the others, the answers back, if they don’t take offense at being asked that first, are just as insensitive and annoying as the original statement.
And the duck killer, may they shop in narrow aisled stores and live in a house full of wire hangers!
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Ha ha! Yes, good punishment. I’m not sure the duck was killed. If it was sufficiently hurt it may have died later on. But yes, and may the mailman hang his mail from hangers on his mailbox, and may he be honked at from behind all the days of his life. For mine is the vengeance, etc.
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I hope you find the guy with the brown truck and he tries to hit another duck. You go get him girl! Don’t even want to start discussing God and people who are being spared, lately there’s been too many people around me, who were not spared of certain things, and it’s becoming ridiculous!
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I’m sorry that’s happening around you. Take care. And yeah, that guy better stop for ducks in future, or I’ll whup his ass. Well, call the police, anyway.
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Thanks 🙂 Don’t you have a very sturdy umbrella in your car? You might have to atta.. I mean protect yourself against him when you see him do similar things!
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Oh Hanneke, I wish I did have an umbrella in my car. Because that would mean rain. So much of it that I’d actually get wet between the car and the store I’m going to unless I had an umbrella…
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I’m always getting cross with hangers. I thought it was just me who seems incapable of removing or replacing an item in my wardrobe without getting them tangled, or knocking several other hangers off the rail!
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No, it’s not you. It’s the hangers!
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I hate wire hangers too they always fall off the bar by themselves and get tangled and you try to put them back on they manage to flip back off, lol, running over a duck? horrible, poor ducks, what a creep. as for stories you mentioned, I was supposed to be there and wasnt, I think alot of that is fabricated to create drama in someone’s life, and I have said the same thing, God spared you but not the others? sounds a bit being self rightous or something. sometimes when you apply bible principles and you avoid trouble of some kinds yes you can say God saved you only because you took the time to read his word and apply it, when translated anyone who reads it and applies it and avoids trouble or gains something can achieve it too.
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Yes, I agree that part of it could be to create drama in their life. It makes the event about them, even when it isn’t, because they ended up not being there. And the self-righteousness is so deeply ingrained that they don’t even realize what they’re saying.
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I forgot about the drivers. Since movi?!ng to Texas, I’ve never encountered more impatient or rude drivers in all my life! What is up with them
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Really? You must not live in Austin. Having lived elsewhere in Texas before moving here, I find the drivers here very polite in general. When someone like that honks at me, I just assume he/she hasn’t been here very long and they still have to learn their manners.
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Austin sounds like a wonderful place! I live in the in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The impatient, honking drivers was the first thing we noticed after moving here. The second was the way drivers at a stop light slowly creep closer and closer to the car in front of them. We’ve witnessed several rear-enders because of this strange “Texas Two Step” in which drivers engage.
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That’s terrible! Where did you move from?
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oops….*moving
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