What I Think About: My Pet Peeve

 At the beginning of the school year in nonfiction writing, we were prompted to write about something we loved, and something we hated (or something like that). I typically have a hard time identifying the things that I hate because they're usually specific scenarios rather than everyday objects or common events. For example, I don't get flustered when I get honked at, yell at bikers who ride in the middle of the street, or lose my temper when I'm stuck in traffic. I did get upset, however, when the lady who directs the crosswalk on Springfield near Edison intentionally hit my car with her stop sign when I sped through the intersection last year.

After failing to find something to write about for the love/hate prompt, I decided that I needed to find what gets under my skin and I've been working to identify which events irritate me regularly. After a lot of searching, I recently found what I think I can call my pet peeve.

Two weeks (or maybe it was a week) ago, me and my dad were driving home after a long school day where my energy and patience had been depleted and where on particularly low levels. It was unbearably hot outside, and for some reason, my dad had the heat on in the car. I was burning up, but of course he was doing just fine. So at one point on our trek back home, I decided to lower the temperature.

The great thing about my car is that the right and left sides of the car have separate air conditioning systems. This means, to throw out a random example, that if I were to lower the temperate on my side, my father would maintain the same temperature on his side. It's quite a luxury; two people can simultaneously operate in polar opposite conditions without being affected by one another. We've had the car for almost seven years now, but miraculously, my father still doesn't understand how the AC works.

So, when I turned down the heat (on my side of the car), my dad swiftly turned it back up without saying word, or even looking in my direction. I don't even think he looked at the dial. He did it so calmly, as if the temperate knob had rotated by itself and he was simply bringing it back to its correct position. It seemed like it was a natural reaction, like he had a sensor in his eyes that monitored the dial and anytime this sensor detected a change, nerves fired in his brain and caused his right arm to reach out and fix the error. It was so emotionless, so heartless, so inconsiderate, so rude, and so many other upsetting things, and it really made me mad.

I had to use all of my reserve energy and patience to keep from blowing up in that moment. I kept silent, but there was a formidable rage brewing inside of me that could've been recognized had my father taken his eyes off the road for only a second. I was at that point of frustration to where you don't want to explain how mad you are, you just want people to notice you and feel your rage through your burning eyes. It's like you're Superman (or Kanye West) and at any moment you could laser somebody with alien eyes and make their head explode. I was heated, which surprised me a bit, because I don't usually get that angry. I figured that if this one event made me this upset, it must be the thing that I hate. I've had some time to prove this hypothesis, and I think it's generally true.

What I've discovered about myself is this: I hate it when someone reverses an action that I've performed without addressing it. It's not the reversal or rejection that irks me, it's the disregard for how I might feel about it. For example, if I were to open a window on a beautiful day to enjoy the sunshine and someone immediately closed it after me, but explained why they hated the sun, I wouldn't be upset at all. But if they closed it and didn't even think to turn and look at me, I would lose my mind. If you have the nerve to cuss me out and tell me why I'm wrong, I can respect that. To act as if I'm invisible, however, is just unacceptable. And a word of advice to anyone who rides in the car with me; if I turn down the heat in the car, don't do what my dad did unless you want to get out and walk home by yourself.