The Writer's Pen

Ever get annoyed? I do. In fact, I’ve been getting annoyed so often lately that I’ve decided it’s time to do a little analysis to see if I can figure out why. I hope to determine if there is a geophysical reason so many things seem to annoy me or if...if I just like being peeved!

A person liking to be perturbed is not such an outlandish possibility. When you are annoyed, you’re a little bit mad. Not crazy mad, not furious or enraged, just a little angered. The first thing that happens to your body when you start getting mad is that your adrenal glands begin to secrete adrenaline and you feel an instant surge of energy. Thus – for a brief instant – you feel good when you first become annoyed!

Then again, even as you’re getting your adrenaline rush, the annoyance is doing nasty things to your psyche. That’s when your mind adjusts your body’s responses to your social and physical environment. In other words, it seems like someone is playing mind games with you. No, I don’t like being annoyed. It just happens and I can’t seem to help it.

For example, when I set something on a table and it immediately falls off, I don’t like it. This happens to me way too often and when it does, I’m immediately ticked off! No, I don’t like it, when a supposedly inanimate object becomes animate and rolls off the table. It makes me especially mad if the object in question happens to be square or flat and it still rolls off the table!

Computers in general annoy me. Someone interrupting my conversation with a friend annoys me. Telemarketers annoy me. Most music videos annoy me. Radios on golf carts annoy me. Cell phones on golf carts annoy me. Warm beer on a golf cart annoys me. My golf clubs seem to annoy me quite often, too. An empty gas tank annoys me. Bright lights on a dark night annoy me. Firecrackers – even on the 4th of July – annoy me. My alarm clock annoys me every morning. Most of the people who sell things online annoy me. Calling soccer football annoys me. Sleeping through my alarm clock and getting up late annoys me. Losing my glasses annoys me. Losing my car keys annoys me. Losing my billfold annoys me. Finding them all exactly where I put them shouldn’t annoy me, but it does. Finding the water pitcher in the refrigerator empty annoys me. Finding the ice cube trays in the freezer empty annoys me. Finding out than no one else in the house uses water from the refrigerator or ice from the freezer, and realizing who must have put them back empty, annoys me. A slow drain in the shower annoys me. Tripping, stumbling and falling all annoy me. And my bifocals annoy the hell out of me.

You know what probably annoys me as much as anything can possibly annoy me? That dang buzzer in my pickup. It buzzes when I turn the key on before buckling my seatbelt. It buzzes if I leave the key in the ignition when I get out. It buzzes if I open my door while the motor is running. It buzzes if I leave my headlights on after I have shut the motor off and opened the door.

Oh yes, I know that the buzzer is there to remind me to buckle my safety belt. I understand that it is there to warn me if my door is ajar while I am going down the road. I can perceive the existence of a buzzer to remind me that I have left my keys in the ignition when I get out. I am fully cognizant that the buzzer is there to warn me that I have left my lights on after shutting the motor off and leaving the vehicle.

The flaw in the system is that there are times when I don’t want to buckle my safety belt, like when I’m merely backing up to hook up to my boat trailer. When you are an untalented backer (as I can be at times), you have to jump in and out to see how close or how far away you are from the hitch. Buckling your safety belt each time is ridiculous, and that buzzer gets real, real, real annoying.

Then there was the time that I did intend to leave the keys in the ignition. My brother-in-law was going use my truck, so I left them inside. When I heard that eternal buzzer, I thought “I know my keys are in there you stupid buzzer, I want to leave them there!”

But, when I came back six hours later, the truck was still sitting where I had left it with the keys in the ignition, and my headlight knob was pulled to the “on” position just like I’d left it. My battery was as dead as Abe Lincoln.

Wouldn’t you think they’d have a different warning sound for leaving your headlights on, than for leaving the keys in your ignition? Boy, is that buzzer ever annoying.

Roger Stoner and his wife published the Peterson Patriot newspaper for more than 15 years. Since selling the newspaper in 2004 three of his books have been published. They are available on Amazon and at libraries throughout the area.