With Apologies to the Pirate...
... it's still comical that we get particularly upset when other people (most of all, our kids) do as we do.
The Pirate got really ticked off when he accidently knocked into an open bottle of mineral water that the Vampire left on the floor next to the couch last night... worse, the Vampire was off at a friend's house, so the Pirate had to clean up the puddle himself and had no better an audience for his subsequent mini-tirade than his unsympathetic wife.
Unsympathetic, because said wife spends what she considers an unreasonable amount of time picking up half-full cans of beer and glasses of water off the bit of floor adjacent to the Pirate's favorite PSII game-playing seat, usually during the time of day when the Pirate has traipsed off to work and is unavailable for mop-up duty.
I'm not complaining about the Pirate and his ways - at least, not at the moment. I have PLENTY of annoying slobular habits myself, which the Pirate mostly lets slide and/or compensates for - and what's more you couldn't find a more loving and kindly guy anywhere on earth. You couldn't get my guy out of my clutches with a crowbar.
What I'm saying is that we spend a lot more time complaining about our kid's behavior than we spend looking at their role models for that behavior, and more time complaining about annoying traits in our friends and neighbors and fellow motorists than we spend examining our own shortcomings, and that if we made a log of our favorite complaints about others and compared them to a list of the complaints our friends and family made about *us*, we might find a lot more similarity there than would make us entirely comfortable.
I will try to remember that next time I complain about territorial driving, tardiness, self-centeredness, monopolizers of conversation, criticism, tactlessness, lack of gratitude, thoughtlessness, or lack of responsibility.
Which should be in about three minutes, give or take 60 seconds...
The Pirate got really ticked off when he accidently knocked into an open bottle of mineral water that the Vampire left on the floor next to the couch last night... worse, the Vampire was off at a friend's house, so the Pirate had to clean up the puddle himself and had no better an audience for his subsequent mini-tirade than his unsympathetic wife.
Unsympathetic, because said wife spends what she considers an unreasonable amount of time picking up half-full cans of beer and glasses of water off the bit of floor adjacent to the Pirate's favorite PSII game-playing seat, usually during the time of day when the Pirate has traipsed off to work and is unavailable for mop-up duty.
I'm not complaining about the Pirate and his ways - at least, not at the moment. I have PLENTY of annoying slobular habits myself, which the Pirate mostly lets slide and/or compensates for - and what's more you couldn't find a more loving and kindly guy anywhere on earth. You couldn't get my guy out of my clutches with a crowbar.
What I'm saying is that we spend a lot more time complaining about our kid's behavior than we spend looking at their role models for that behavior, and more time complaining about annoying traits in our friends and neighbors and fellow motorists than we spend examining our own shortcomings, and that if we made a log of our favorite complaints about others and compared them to a list of the complaints our friends and family made about *us*, we might find a lot more similarity there than would make us entirely comfortable.
I will try to remember that next time I complain about territorial driving, tardiness, self-centeredness, monopolizers of conversation, criticism, tactlessness, lack of gratitude, thoughtlessness, or lack of responsibility.
Which should be in about three minutes, give or take 60 seconds...
posted by Eileen at 8:29 AM
3 Comments:
So you are facing the dreaded "do as I say, not as I do" behavior dead on!
Well, don't know about dead on... sideways, through the Pirate, I'd say!
:D
ahem.
This post was funny because of your blog subtitle..."Why go to the trouble and expense of forming your own opinions when you can use mine?"
in all seriousness, though, it may rankle just to see people engage in behavior that you COULD be guilty of more frequently because of having a TENDENCY towards it but who don't make the same effort to CHECK it that you do...when I get mad at that sort of stuff it's because I have to make a special effort not to be clueless and I see it as an act of will when other people with tendencies towards cluelessness don't make the same gargantuan effort that I do to curb it.
[making goofy face with tongue hanging out side, eyes crossed]
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