I am not a big fan of people in general, but there are some specific types that drive me crazy. These are some broad brush stroke kinds of people I try to avoid.
1. Shark Mouths
“Hello, nice to see you, person whose name I never bothered to ask. Where did we leave off last time? Oh yes, in fourth grade…”
I’m not a chatty person. I talk when I have something to say. I really can’t stand people whose mouths have to constantly move while saying nothing of any consequence. I call these non-stop talkers shark mouths, as if they’ll die if they stop moving.
There’s a woman in my neighborhood that I try to avoid, because if I run into her, I will be stuck standing on the street for at least fifteen minutes listening to crap I really don’t care about. No amount of I-have-to-go-nows or see-you-laters will deter her from her mission to tell me all about absolutely nothing.
I’ve even taken to walking my dog later or earlier at night in the hopes of not running into her. Last night, I had just started to walk my dog, i.e. she had only peed once out of the required three times, when I saw the neighborhood shark mouth. I crossed the street and pretended that my dog had already peed the required three times just so I didn’t have to hear a million sentences of inane blather strung together with the precision and quality of a preschooler’s macaroni necklace.
(instructables.com)
2. Backstabbers
Said to person: “I love your hair!”
Said behind person’s back: “I’ve seen Legos with better hair than that.”
I was born into a family of backstabbers. My family will bitch up a storm behind my uncle’s back, but won’t say a thing about how annoying he is to his face. My uncle and his family are annoying. They visit my family every summer and treat my parents’ house like a bed and breakfast. They contribute nothing towards food or housework. They basically sit on their asses the entire time. My mom just tolerates it while they’re there, but the minute they leave, I get a phone call about all the shitty things they did this time.
It drives me nuts. For twenty years, I’ve been telling my mom to stand up for herself. Tell them to contribute money or effort. Don’t allow them to come visit. Put your foot down. She never does. She just bitches about it afterwards.
3. The Flaky
“Sure. I’ll help you move (except when it actually comes to helping you move, you won’t be able to reach me).“
I was raised with a very simple concept: say what you mean, mean what you say. Of course, my family didn’t actually follow this rule themselves (see #2), but it’s a good rule anyway. What it means is that I do not make promises I don’t intend to keep. If I don’t think I will do something, I don’t promise it.
The Flaky go about willy-nilly promising this and that, but they rarely ever follow through. When people make promises to me, I assume that they intend to try to keep those promises, because I would. It seems a lot of people weren’t raised that way.
Why? Why do you do that? If you don’t want to do something, don’t agree to do it. There’s a very easy way to get around breaking promises all the time. It involves only two letters. When someone asks you something and you don’t think you can or you don’t want to do it, just say no.
4. The Internet Preacher
“You shouldn’t eat apples this year.”
“Why not?”
“I read on the internet that they’re infused with evil.”
“What? Where’d you read that?”
“On the internet, so it’s absolutely true.”
The internet has made researching stuff super easy, but it has also created a new breed of hypochondriacal know-it-alls: the internet preacher. The preacher knows better than you do what’s good for you and will push it on you every single time you meet, because the internet says so. Internet preachers are responsible, at least in part, for disseminating the idea that vaccinating children against life-threatening illnesses is somehow a bad idea.
5. Uninvested complainers
“Want to go see a movie?”
“Sure!”
“Which one?”
“I don’t care. You pick.”
Three hours later…
“That was the crappiest movie I’ve ever seen. Here are the nineteen hundred and fifty-seven reasons why…”
“Sorry you hated it. I thought the explody bits were quite good.”
“It sucked. I didn’t want to see Explody Space War anyway. I wanted to see Dwarves & Unicorns: A Love Story.”
“Well, you should have suggested Dwarves & Unicorns: A Love Story when we were talking about what to see!”
“It seemed like you really wanted to see Explody Space War.”
“I only picked Explody Space War because you said you didn’t care what we saw.”
“Whatever. I shall now complain about how awful Explody Space War was for the next nine days and tell everyone on Facebook that you have terrible taste in movies.”
UGH. The reason I vote in every single election is so that I have a right to complain. Put up or shut up.
What kinds of people bother you?
Fish Of Gold 