#431 Baby Peeve

I was talking to my friend Bobby the other day and he was going on about what he said was his pet peeve. I said if you’re going to have a pet, a peeve is the perfect thing to have. I mean, think about it. They’re pretty easy to feed and water. Feeding a peeve is as simple as dwelling on some feeling of indignity for a while. And watering a peeve, well, peeves are kind of like pet plants. They grow and grow with just a little constant attention. Walking the peeve? No problem, peeves love to trotted out in front of all and sundry. And you don’t have to worry about carrying those little bags around after them either, if some joker tells you your peeve is full of you know, that’s just a good excuse to deck him. Nobody, but nobody, messes with me when I’m airing out my peeve. I do have one pretty serious pet peeve though, people who make lame excuses. An excuse shouldn’t be lame. I mean with today’s vast array or verbal resources, all excuses ought to be walking healthy on all fours like a full-blown peeve. My kids used the internet to supply verbiage for countless papers in high school. And I once had someone send me a Dear John letter that came from a template she acquired on the internet. All she had to do was punch in a couple of personal identifiers and voila, out spitted a document full of calculated vitriol. Had some good lines in it too, about like the emotionless bag of leather I called my heart. If I hadn’t been as incapable of feelings as the letter described I might have been upset. As it was, I figured my name isn’t John, so what the hell. My favorite excuse of the 21st century is “I have to stop talking now, my batteries are getting low.” The cellphone is the great conversation ender. Sometimes involuntarily, but sometimes completely voluntarily and better yet, voluntary without fear of guilt or condemnation. I’ve gotten so good at the “my phone is beeping I’m running out of batteries” excuse that I’ve actually done it a couple of times accidentally on my work phone. The downside, of course, is you have to be really sure the conversation is over. You don’t want to forget and have to call the hangup-ee right back and tell her you need to pick up something at the old house or anything. Speaking of excuses, a woman at the airport the other day didn’t have any excuse at all. Seems she put her baby through the luggage scanner by mistake. Airport security caught it when the saw the x-ray image of an infant. Oops. The lady was understandably flustered, the infant was okay. But if you’ve ever had a baby in Osh Kosh overalls with all those metal buttons, you’ll understand why the lady subconsciously opted for the drive through. Still, asking the security guards to check while the baby was in there to see if the kid had swallowed her missing car keys was a little much. Letting babies suck on car keys is one of my pet peeves.
America, ya gotta love it.