Pet Peeves, Part 2
I've admitted before that I have a few pet peeves. -- http://staletoast.com/home/2013/10/23/pet-peeves
For example, I once saw a man clipping his fingernails at a table at a fast food restaurant. I immediately lost my appetite and promptly exited the restaurant before he could move on to his toenails. Too bad there wasn't a way to sanitize my eyes without damaging them. Certain activities were never meant to be done around food. I couldn't even look at that restaurant when I drove by for months for fear that I might throw up in my mouth a little.
Also, why do people chew on straws? Don't they realize their saliva is just running into their drink . . . or worse, out the other end, if the straw isn't in a drink?! Yuck!
We were making dinner the other night and I said, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" (At least I didn't say "literally," right? See previous Pet Peeves blog.)
My husband responded, "Hyperbole!" The only problem was he pronounced it hyper-bowl instead of hahy-pur-buh-lee.
What is this hyper-bowl? Is this the next level of the Super Bowl? Do they add in a speed component with no timeouts or breaks between plays? Wait a minute. Continuous play? So a two and a half hour game could be played in 30 minutes? This sounds like a game I'd be more interested in watching.
This conversation led to my son asking what on earth hyperbole meant. After explaining that it means an exaggeration, he proceeded to use it in a sentence. "I hyperbole a lot." Another inward cringe. Sorry, buddy, it's a noun, not a verb.
Maybe you don't use the word hyperbole much. Let's talk about something more common -- yet another pet peeve of mine.
There's
In and of itself, this is a harmless word. Here is when I inwardly cringe: "There's fifteen people in our party."
Don't you mean "There are fifteen people in our party"?
"There's so many bugs outside!" So there is so many bugs outside? No, there are so many bugs outside.
Admittedly, I have a problem. Every time I hear someone use "there's" when they should say "there are" or "there're" (which I know sounds a little like stuttering), I think I die a little inside.
I try really hard not to point out these pet peeves to people since I have so many and I'm sure I do things to annoy others, too. After all, just as we use sand paper to make a surface smooth, our own rough areas may be used to smooth out others.
So I'll continue to try to hide my inward cringe, but if I squeeze my eyes shut in the middle of a conversation, you may want to rethink the word you just used.
