Pet Peeves and the Accoutrementes of Grouchiness

Those of you who continue reading along with my rants on "getting older" ... on "Playing in the Last Quarter," as I keep saying, as if one can tickle the Grim Reaper into compliance ... those of you still here may well have guessed that I have a curious preference for getting-out in cyber-words what otherwise might be extruded from my very being like cursewords from a thug on a Brooklyn street corner. "He tells jokes and writes funny little ('little-little) ditties to cover up his grouchiness and his propensity to tell people to bugger-off."

I sort of remember the first time, I gave a visitor to my office "the bird," as it is called. I came to call it and other symbolically aggressive acts "the hat pin." I'm fortuitously in a service business in which there are no absolute requirements to metabolize others' guff. There are boundaries. I don't make love or overt war with my visitors but -- beyond that -- I feel bound only to be of assistance to them in enriching their lives. Zo! When someone comes in all puffed up with their rage, I live under no prohibitive forces that prevent me from asking: "Just what the Hell are you so angry about?"

I don't think it's the dangling participle that gets such people to lay it on me ... It's kinda like opening up a floodgate. The vitriol and venom are forcefully puked out ... oh! ... and typically we both feel better.

I suppose that I'm trying to justify the sundry manners by which my own peevishness becomes manifest ... let me list a couple of my pet peeves:

• People who speak as if they know the truth are on my list and really piss me off. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm still annoyed by the two women at Thanksgiving who with ease and facility were able to categorize me as a reactionary shit for not having decided how I feel about abortion. I guess I don't like people who know ... err ... I know that about myself.
• There's a similar group of people who reason that if someone disagrees with them, it's because they're wrong. My middle finger wants to snap to attention within ten feet of those folk.
• People without gratitude are center-target for me ... people who one cannot satisfy. I remember at a protest during graduate school days in the 1960's. The students had quite sensible complaints, I think all of which surprised President Marty Meyerson and which he agreed had to be immediately remedied. About a dozen students refused to leave and a huge mess occurred over the next weeks. Yuch! Including Meyerson getting the can for not calling in the National Guard. 
• Then there are the cynics! One of my rules in life, I borrow from the 2,000 year old Ethics of the Elders ... Pirkei Avos, as it was called: Judge everyone to the side of righteousness. Y'know! Innocent until proven guilty. In my mind I've come to call it the presumption of good intentions. I suppose that cynics (not the ancient Greek Cynics but the garden variety type) are those who look for the glitch and that glitch of theirs pisses me off.

But, truth be told, I think I need a guru or someone giving an inspiring Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) to help me get over this disgruntledness or maybe I just need to embrace that part of me that's like Mr. Engler's cane. Old Man Engler would sit in front of his house of W. 5th Street in Coney Island and shake his stick at all us kids ... hey ... just trying to have a good time.

Some years ago, I wrote about my peevishness on a birthday morning:

Being that No One Writes Verse
for Abe Isaacs Anymore

“A mere piss in the ocean, all these years,”
Said Abe, as he trailed down birthday stairs,
To serve birthday kibble to waiting dog and cats,
To fetch birthday coffee, alas! No more birthday cigarettes.
“A day for all to revel with middle-aged me,
How much more pleased could any man be?”

“A cosmic fleck on the Milky Way”
Aside, said he, his fears to stay.
Then appeared in his throat the telltale knot
When noticing the cat’s favorite spot
To shit upon when puss is feeling bitter
That no one had bothered to change her litter.
And while feeding the dog, the wish to run
Realizing that decisions are never made as one
But rather by the rule: my will be done.
“Didn’t we agree on a uniform ban
on inuring the cats to eat meat from a can!?”
Abe found a solution, a tad-bit rash
Abe pulled out his sprinkler and make his own splash.
“I piss on the world! Why the hell not?
Who gives the pussy dominion on that spot?
A day for all to revel with middle-aged me
Please … save your sighs and no sympathy.”

“For I’m no zit on the Lord’s six day creation
Having arrived after all other failed experimentation.
Now, getting’ on, know what I ought’a do”
Abe barks at the rising Sun, “Hey Sun, Hey you!
Most years gone but some remain
Of vigor and charm and hearty refrain
Let all who’ve tasted their own felicity
Come and revel … Mine lives, too!
Inside this protesting but vigorous,
Middle-aged me!”The moral of Abe’s story is plain;
I explain:
Many will scoff when you’re pissed off
And laugh at you if you run off
But if you seek pets, others or missus to be cooperatively compliant
rather than covertly and silently defiant
then the rule is:
He who pisses never misses.

Regards from a Peevish Old Guy