What are my pet peeves?
To start, I hate, hate, hate gum chewing. I hate it so much that I don’t allow my boys to chew gum around me. I don’t like the way it smells, sounds, and looks, particularly if someone is open-mouth chewing and smacking. When I see someone chewing the cud, I have to turn away.
Even standing next to the shelves of gum in the grocery store line is a challenge because I can smell the gum through the packaging.
Related to gum chewing, but totally its own thing, I don’t like it when people talk with food in their mouths. I don’t mean taking a small bite of food and then making a quick remark. I mean full-on eating and yammering at the same time. MY CHILDREN DO THIS and it’s been an exhaustive effort to teach them otherwise. It’s bad manners, it’s disrespectful to those at the table with you, and it’s gross.
Finally, “I didn’t have time” is often a big fat lie. There are some occasions when this excuse is a valid one, but I think it’s rare. People make time for what they really want to do. There are a lot of things in life we don’t want to do, and yet we have to do them. Instead of saying, “I didn’t have time,” I’d rather someone just say, “I just didn’t make time for it.” And I would reply, “Yeah, I didn’t make time for that either.”