Prepare to be annoyed

From an early age, I can vividly remember certain things "getting on my nerves." Those things have evolved from my nerves getting frazzled to a full blown list of pet peeves.

My brother would crack his knuckles growing up, something that still bothers me today, regardless of the person doing the cracking. It's worse than running your nails down a chalkboard to me. I will shot someone a death stare upon the first sign of knuckle cracking. My friend, Kadie, cracks her knuckles all the dang time. She knows it bothers me (especially when I wince), only to say she can't help it, her hands hurt if she doesn't.

Another pet peeve of mine is when people crunch ice. First of all, it sounds like you are chewing rocks and second, it can't be good for your teeth to endure so much hard trauma. My mom is an avid ice cruncher. Once again, she knows the effect it has on me. She has been very good in the last several decades of trying not to chomp down full throttle on an ice cube. This in turn drives me more insane because I see she has it in her mouth trying not to make noise...just get it over with already. But again, a look of mine is on the way at the first sign of a cup of ice close to a mouth.

I could go on and on about table manners. Our parents would have a fit if we acted like we were eating out of a trough for dinner. "Chew with your mouth closed." "Elbow off the table." "For crying out loud, hold your fork right."...just a few examples of the memories around the dinner table. Therefore, if you eat like you are completely uncivilized, smacking your way through the lovely dinner prepared for you, another stare of mine will ebb its way to your vicinity. And please, don't blow your nose at the table with the napkin you are using to wipe your mouth (especially if it is cloth).

So, I may sound like a rough person to be around from the above statements. If I told you the other small, but important, pet peeves I have you probably would not want to be friends with me. I'm really not that bad, just a little neurotic at times.

But here's the biggie...bad grammar (written or oral). Heaven forbid, I make a mistake. There are some out there who are watching my every move to report my use of a dangling participle. I've really upset some people (uh, rephrase that to family) by reporting to them the way they misspelled a word and misused their/there/they're. You know, if I really wanted to get technical about it I would freely inform them about capitalization, punctuation, and overall sentence structure (please stop ending sentences with prepositions). I blame this pet peeve on being a teacher. But seriously...is it that hard to proofread what you write? Oral communication is different, there are some things that fly out of our mouths unedited. Guilty as charged (although I try to conjugate my verbs very carefully before speaking). My accent always throws people for a loop, so I don't want to give anyone the ammunition to accuse me of being an uneducated hillbilly. By the way, A LOT is two words. Bad grammar use will jump off a piece of literary print before I even read the sentence. I even have a hard time texting abbreviations because they are not grammatically correct. And, I would save a lot of text lines if I didn't feel the need to put two spaces behind a period.

I'm a mess. I admit it. I'm by no means perfect. Please excuse me in advance if I correct your grammar or give you "the look." It isn't anything personal, I promise. Feel free to correct my grammar at anytime.