Pushing Your Buttons

I think it's pretty interesting how certain things can make a certain person so very angry. It could be the smallest, most insignificant thing to you, but to someone else it sets off a bomb of heated words and turbulent feelings.Why do all of our individual fuses connect to something different?

Yesterday, I had the privilege of listening to a dear friend of mine vent more harshly than I have ever heard her speak. One of our teammates was (yet again) skipping practice because of other 'obligations'. Now, I won't say that I don't understand my friend's frustration, this being the fifth or sixth time our teammate has attended other events instead of our practice, but let me tell you, it certainly didn't get under my skin as much as it did hers! She was absolutely livid, just seething with retribution and contempt. This I could tell, and I wasn't even speaking directly to her, only corresponding through short, choppy text messages. So you can imagine how mad she was when only a simple text message conveyed such strong displeasure.

This did get me to thinking though, why do we all have those certain pet peeves? Those small little occurrences that push your buttons dead center and can sometimes go as far as ruining your whole day? Heck if I know, but I do know that we ALL have them, whether we'd like to admit it or not.

I will tell you, some of mine are exponentially stupid. They range from people driving a million miles under the speed limit to my mother making small comments on what I decided to wear that day. But regardless, they all have the potential to make me equally enraged and all together hard to deal with. There are things that I get angry about for only a few minutes, but then there are those that make me on edge and fuming for the majority of the day. I disgust myself on those days, because I unknowingly seem to pass on my aggravation to almost everyone I come in contact with. My snide, smart-aleck comments and retorts could fire up even the most docile people. I really must try and work on that.

I don't feel too horrible about it though most of the time, because everyone has those days when we let our current attitude dominate our mind and actions. I'm definitely not excusing this behavior, because I most certainly hate being at the attacking end of it, but I am saying that it happens to all of us, and I understand that. Also, on the flip side, I will say that I occaisionally find people exceedingly humerous when they're at their wits end over something that seems extrememly miniscule to me. But that seems to only infuriate them more, so I really should work on keeping my mouth shut then too!

I'm sure we could all work on reigning in our horrid torrents of feeling on those bad days, but I won't lie to you, my day has been made a few times at the hilarity of what we so jokingly call, pet peeves.

"I don't have pet peeves, I have whole kennels of irritation." -Whoopi Goldburg