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Ticking Off List
of Complaints
“You know what really ticks me off?” Grandpa Earl says to his friend Clyde as they sit on a park bench in the comic strip Pickles. “Old people who sit around and complain about things.”
“But you’re an old person, and you sit around and complain about things,” replies Clyde in the second panel.
“I know,” concludes Earl. “And that really ticks me off.”
Well, if I were sitting on a park bench with Grandpa Earl – at opposite ends with both of us wearing masks, of course – here are some of the things I’d complain about . . .
People not wearing masks who don’t respect the six-foot social distancing cushion.
When someone rushes ahead of me in the grocery line and then stalls at the register while waiting for their child or spouse to arrive with an armload of items.
Self-checkouts because then I’m the one holding everyone else up with my befuddlement.
Speaking of lines, I’m forever grumpy at drivers in the front at a stoplight who need a wake-up honk when it turns from red to green.
Also, drivers who straddle halfway in a turn lane instead of scooting all the way over.
And pokey freeway drivers who clog up the left lane so a string of cars has to pass them on the right.
Speaking of speed, when a mom or dad runner pushing a baby stroller passes me. Such show-offy-ness just seems uncalled for.
When bad things happen to good people really ticks me off.
When I forget to take the trash out to the curb the night before pickup and then hear the garbage truck the next morning without enough warning to get my barrels out in time.
Forgetting passwords has me muttering quite often.
Facebook posts that confuse “they’re” and “their” and “there” as well as “your and “you’re.”
But it ticks me off even more that I never know whether to use “whoever” or “whomever.” Oh well, whatever.
When someone’s mask droops down below their nose. Nobody asked me, but in these situations I suggest we all adopt the phrase “Your fly is down” – even for women.
Heck, I’ll even accept, “You’re fly is down.”
Basketball telecasts that insist on showing a close-up of whoever (whomever?) just made a shot and meanwhile we miss the fastbreak going back the other way.
I don’t like Lakers’ home jerseys that are now brighter than a yellow highlight marker.
Long before last Tuesday’s unPresidential Debate Debasement, I have been complaining about political debates not having kill switches on the mics to prevent Thanksgiving dinner-like free-for-alls.
When emails that I want wind up going into spam and robocalls that are harder to keep blocked than ants materializing in a kitchen.
When I have a discount code for an online purchase and then forget to type it in before hitting the “Complete Purchase” button.
I have been complaining like an old-school curmudgeon for months about Major League Baseball’s experimental rule this coronavirus-shorten season of putting a runner on second base at the start of each extra inning’s at-bats.
But it really pains me, Mr. Traditionalist who still grinds his teeth at the Designated Hitter, that I actually find myself liking the bonus runner rule and the different strategies – Play for one run? Go for a big inning? – it creates.
So now I’m complaining that the extra-runner rule is not being used in the playoffs!
I thought of a couple more really good things to include in this column, but forgot what they were. Like Grandpa Earl, sometimes I really tick myself off.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …
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