Gentle Ranting

This may be the rantingest rant I’ve ever ranted. So help me, today I HAD HAD ENOUGH AND I DON’T CARE WHO I OFFEND. A warning, I am using expletives.

We live in a townhouse with units on either side of us. The only windows in our place are at the front and the back. The woman on one side smokes, mostly in the front. About a year ago when I had my baby, my husband and I moved our bedroom to the back side of the house to avoid the smoke seeping in at all hours of the day and night. My daughter was still sleeping in our room and I couldn’t have her breathing in that stuff under an open window (which we couldn’t close because it was uncomfortably hot last summer and fans just didn’t cut it). I woke up very early in the morning days later to smell smoke in our room. Alarmed, I stuck my head out the window and saw my neighbour smoking in her backyard. I was irate. We had MOVED OUR ROOM to get away from her smoke.

Pissed off, I wrote a letter. Yes, I took the pussy way out, but I don’t care. Because, you see, smokers should know that their smoke carries much farther than they think. My neighbour should be especially privy to this given that every time she lights up she must hear the SLAM! of our windows sliding shut. So, I didn’t think I owed it to her to talk to her face to face. Plus, I didn’t think I could keep my cool.

I asked her if she could relegate her smoking to the front of the house only. I told her that I had moved our bedroom because of her and that I couldn’t have my infant daughter breathing that in. Surely, she understood. And so I thought she did. She never mentioned it, but to my knowledge she didn’t smoke in the back again.

Until today.

I’m sitting in my living room at the back of the house and I smell the telltale odor. I run over to shut the window. I look outside and see my neighbour, smoking in her backyard. What the hell?

Oh, did I mention that last week we got new neighbours on the OTHER side of us and the man of the house smokes out back, too? So, I can’t open my windows in the front OR the back of my house? In the middle of summer? I’m getting that crap in my house all day every day from all sides? This is BULLSHIT.

My husband is not put out like I am. Like most former or current smokers, my husband either can’t smell it or it doesn’t bother him. Plus, he doesn’t think it’s all that bad to breathe in when it’s so dispersed. After all, people used to smoke around their children all the time, back in the dark ages. I was clearly making a big deal out of absolutely nothing.

So I wrote a letter to both neighbours asking them both to kindly only smoke at the front of the house. I will, with great annoyance, surrender the use of my windows at the front SO LONG AS THE BACK IS FREE AND CLEAR OF THAT DISGUSTING SHIT.

I should NOT have to suck back somebody else’s bad habit in the comfort of my own home. Several people have told me that I’m in the wrong because it’s a smoker’s right to smoke on their property. Well, smart asses, I also have a right NOT to be subjected to smoke. My neighbours are FORCING me to smoke. So whose right supercedes whose? MINE DOES. I wish caps could emphasize just how loudly I’m making this point. You have the right to shoot a gun, too, but not AT me. What about my right not to suffer ill effects from your poor choice?

I understand it’s hard to quit smoking, but that’s not my point here, so don’t comment about how hard done by smokers are, or how terrible it is that they can’t go anywhere. I also don’t dislike smokers. My position is that smokers need to be considerate of the people around them and stop having such an indignant entitlement complex that tells them they have a right to impose noxious fumes on me and my baby daughter.

I’m a person who likes to walk fast. I almost never move leisurely, especially when I’m on my own. When I was in elementary school, I used to run home and one day this guy asked me why I did that. The reason I ran had never really occurred to me, so after taking a moment to consider it I said, “So that I get the good seat in front of the TV.” As a kid, I was always battling  with my siblings for prime seating in the family room. These days, I don’t have to jockey for position on the good recliner but I still advance at a clipped pace everywhere I go. I don’t think I’m always rushed, it’s just that if I’m already walking, I may as well get a decent workout from it. Or maybe it’s the result of my pet peeve over wasted time. Oooohhh, I HATE wasted time. 

So when I’m walking with or behind people who go at a turtle’s pace it drives me a bit bananas. The situation is most aggravating on sidewalks where you can’t easily pass. When I have to slow down I feel like THE WORLD IS PASSING ME BY. Not everyone has to walk as fast as me, but when someone is really dragging their heels I just can’t take it. I get uptight and anxious and I wonder why they don’t just GET A MOVE ON. How on earth do they go through life moving so slow?

This annoyance I experience is similar to my one-year-old daughter’s when, all of a sudden, after eating the last Cheerio, she realizes there are unexpectedly none left. A moderate panic begins and doesn’t abate until more Cheerios are poured onto her tray and she can resume snacking. Trapped behind a slow walker, I am similarly unable to exercise patience for what is surely a benign situation that will imminently resolve itself. Instead, I become immediately antsy and I won’t be calm again until I can resume my normal speed.

My question is, are these people just better at smelling the roses or does their complete lack of urgency spell laziness? I’m sure I could benefit from being a calmer person all-around, but if I became a slow walker I don’t know that I could stand myself.

People are always going to bug you. Why, there’s someone sitting beside me right now who’s chipping away at the last of my well-worn patience… Ha! Just kidding, you-whose-name-I-won’t-mention-here-lest-we-know-people-in-common!

But seriously, I am pretty annoying myself. I know this because my husband tells me so. I do annoying things (like putting my stray hairs on the side of the shower after shampooing so it doesn’t go down the drain but not gathering them up afterwards) and I have annoying personality traits (like expressing my opinions more emphatically than is comfortable for a low-key guy like him). I’m sure other people think I’m annoying, too, but no one else has ever told me. I don’t say this to put myself down, rather because I know every person is annoying to somebody. It’s what makes life interesting.

No one had ever told me they didn’t like me, nor had I ever heard of anyone not liking me, until I was in my late twenties. This is not to say that no one disliked me before then, I had just never heard of it. The person who first made me aware of their distaste was a co-worker of mine who could barely muster a grimace in my general direction when we saw each other in passing at work. I have my theories as to why this person didn’t care for me, but I honestly don’t know for sure. We never had any meaningful interaction whatsoever.

I can either be hurt, or just slightly put off if people don’t like me, depending on the level of respect I have for them. There are those whose opinions carry so little weight that I can only be amused by the fact. It’s not that I don’t care if I’ve put someone off – I don’t want to put anyone off. And I certainly don’t want to hurt anyone or be rude. But if I’ve thought about it honestly and I’ve come up scratching my head, then I can’t be bothered to waste any more energy on it. I just don’t care.

I find I care less and less the older I get. I used to be very concerned that everyone think me as delightful as I think myself.

It’s not about not caring what people think about you. Everyone cares, and I most certainly do. But some people just don’t make the cut.

The person beside me does make the cut, by the way.

Something happened today on my walk to the grocery store that is very typical. I was coming towards a group of kids who were maybe 13 or 14 years old with my daughter in her stroller. I did what I do every time I approach someone coming the opposite way on the sidewalk: I moved to the right, expecting they would also go to their right and we would pass each other in an efficient and practical manner. Sometimes, one person goes to the left, which is not what traffic customs dictate, but it’s okay because the intent is the same. Every once in a blue moon, however, you meet a different set of humans on the sidewalk who will do neither. These specimens are named kids.

I define kids as any person under an approximate age of 19, a group that can be further divided into children and teenagers. Kids are very insular human beings, having little concept of consequence or how their actions affect others. And in many circumstances they can be highly annoying by sheer virtue of their age. They think they’re funny when they’re not, they think they’re smart when they’re not, and they think they’re super cute when they’re super not.

Now, I love kids. I have nephews and nieces, I have a baby daughter and I want more. And I think all those kids are perfect and hilarious and thoughtful and bright and good looking.

Which is why THEY would never approach a woman pushing a stroller with a group of their teenaged friends and SPREAD THEMSELVES ACROSS THE ENTIRE SIDEWALK.

AND NOT MOVE.

FORCING ME TO GO OFF-ROADING INTO THE BUSHES.

Should I have just mowed them over? They’d survive. Plus, they’d learn a valuable lesson that would make society respect them so much more. I would be happy to do my part. For society.

A less drastic, and perhaps less effective approach, would be to just stand there and force them to walk around me. I should remember to do this next time.

I don’t mind when children do this because I understand they haven’t really learned how the world works. But adolescents have no excuse and I suspect they’re just being asses. Asses who can’t see past the end of their own noses. Which means it may be a myopic issue.

Clearly, a whole subset of our society needs glasses.

MOVE IT.

I have done many an embarrassing thing. In my childhood, none quite so much as when I was in third grade and sitting on the floor of the multi-purpose room at school with my two buddies, Ryan and Brock. Ryan said something I found enormously funny and I snorted. The snorting wasn’t that bad, but the resulting explosion of snot, was. I clearly remember how the rope of loose, wet boogers SHOT out of my nose and how my hand reached out to grab it down at my waist. It was a few seconds before it broke off and formed a giant, gelatinous blob in the palm of my hand. At that point, I found myself in a bit of a conundrum: what to do with the snot? The sheer size of the blob made it rather unfeasible to wipe on an article of clothing. Snot does not absorb well. Plus, it’s not like I could make like it didn’t happen. The boys were roaring with laughter, and at one point Brock even said, “Cool! Do that again!”

And of course I’ve had oodles of humiliating experiences in the twenty-five years since then. Most are just the result of stupid human behaviour, but several have come as a result of stepping out of my comfort zone to try new things. For instance, many moons ago I auditioned to be the relief traffic girl at the TV station where I work. I wasn’t even on air but my voice was wavering like I had a gun to my face. I drank some water, soldiered on, did some more takes and waited for the producer’s decision. When I look back now, the ridiculous optimism I held at being offered the position was actually hilarious.

A couple of years later, I auditioned to be one of twelve contestants on a Canadian reality show. I was offered a spot on the show where the contestants (who were all writers) were to live in a book store for three days and each write a novel. The whole thing was televised and they had “challenges” every few hours for the writers to compete in. I SUCKED ASS in these challenges. I tried too hard to be smart, I was intimidated by the far more accomplished writers alongside me and I let myself believe I wasn’t good at what I do. I lost more challenges than not, and it got to be a joke that the blonde girl was going to come out on bottom yet again. Let’s all laugh at how terrible Laura is at coming up with catchy opening sentences, deciphering anagrams and recognizing famous authors! I ended up doing fairly well on my novel, but the humiliation of the actual TV show left me almost unable to watch it when it aired.

One of the most uncomfortable situations is to be embarrassed for somebody. I could tell some of my acquaintances were embarrassed for me after those debacles, and maybe even a wee bit happy about my failures. Several adopted a distinctly smug demeanor whilst ostensibly avoiding the topic. I would have rather they’d addressed the elephant in the room and said, “Good for you for at least trying out!” or “Look how you redeemed yourself with that great story!” or even “Your upper arms looked great on-screen!”.

It took me a few months, but I am glad I went through those experiences. Not because anything particularly outstanding came out of either of them, but because I stepped out of my comfort zone and did something different. How are we supposed to evolve and become more interesting, able , skilled and confident if we always do the same things?

I wonder if my smug comrades have ever challenged themselves and pushed the boundaries of what their limits are. I might make a fool of myself a thousand times over, but at the very least I’ll be a more refined human being. And, maybe, doing things that make me uncomfortable will even lead me to do great things and get everything I want out of life.

So who’s the fool?