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A friend of mine asked me recently what my biggest pet peeve is, and I said, “I don’t think I have one.”
He said, “Nothing? Really? You have kids, don’t you?” As if the mere fact that you have children means you have pet peeves. (OK, s**t, he’s right, kids means pet peeves, for sure.)
Then I thought about it, and I came up with one pet peeve.
Then two.
Then… 15.
A brief list off the top of my head once I spent 30 seconds thinking about it:
—When bedtime is 6 hours long and requires one water, three songs, two books, a back rub, and 32 other things in order to get an exhausted 8-year-old to lay down in their bed.
—When teenagers think the dish fairy is going to pick up their dishes, and the clothes fairy will handle all the laundry on the floor in the bathroom, and the tissue fairy will pick up all those snot rags off the couch… so they just leave everything wherever they want, and the fairies shall be summoned!
—When a teenager who has a driver’s license and a car calls you to let you know there is cat puke on the kitchen floor. Sure, a*****e, don’t get near it, leave it for me!
—When my cats puke on the kitchen floor because they eat wires, bugs, socks, old twist ties, whatever.
—When my neighbor’s yard is too messy.
—When my other neighbor’s yard is too nice.
—When people don’t put their shopping carts back at the grocery store. Seriously, people, what’s the difference between throwing your trash on the ground and leaving a cart in the middle of the parking lot? Either way, you make something that you’re responsible for into someone else’s problem. If I left my shopping cart in your front yard, how would you feel about that?
—When people absolutely suck at parking their cars and eat up multiple spots in a busy parking lot.
—When my basement floods and I have to bail a river’s worth of water with plastic buckets.
OK, I can keep going. But I’m not going to, because you get the point. As you can see, I have lots of things in life that are annoying to me right now. And that’s not good.
It made me really contemplate what a pet peeve is. I always thought of pet peeves as funny little things that we each have. They’re cute, right? And that might be the case for other people, and it might be the case for me sometimes. But right now, that is too many pet peeves for me to have. If I came up with a thorough list, it’s probably north of 25 things that annoy me at the moment. And that usually means that I am not accepting life on life’s terms, which is one of the fundamental tenets of sobriety. It means I am looking out at the world and seeing all the ways that I should be in charge, that everybody else is idiots. Does that sound sober and serene to you?
You might still be wondering, what’s the big deal with being bothered by cat puke and shopping carts and some other stuff? Well, think about that list and what it means when I walk around the world. It means I am annoyed standing in the middle of my house. It means I am annoyed in my front yard, looking at my neighbors. It means I am annoyed in every parking lot I am in. It means I am in a constant state of annoyance. I’m not sure I can be clean and serene and also annoyed by 25 things every day.
I know there are certain people out there whose constant annoyance is amusing and charming. I’m kind of hoping you found my list amusing. I’m also thinking of Bill Burr’s signature brand of comedy, where he observes the world and is aggravated by everything he comes in contact with. It makes for hilarious standup… but I’m not sure it’s how I want to live my life. In fact, I can’t.
So I am going to take a look at those things and try to accept them for what they are. Because think about it for a second: On what planet is the grocery store NOT going to have a cart in the middle of it? At what mall will I ever go where everybody is parked perfectly between the lines? What teenager in the history of humanity ever cleaned up after themselves without getting yelled at? This might not be the perfect world. But it’s the world we got, and I need to accept that.
But… put your f*****g shopping carts back. Seriously.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
Fed up with her husband’s coming home drunk every night, late one evening a wife drove her husband up the mountain to an overlook where they could see the local liquor factory in full swing below. Lights were flashing, machines were roaring, and trucks were pulling in and out.
“See?” the wife said. “They can make it faster than you can drink it.”
“Yes,” he replied. “But you have to admit, I’ve got ‘em working nights.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2002, Donny B. from Wurtsboro, New York)
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