Last week I was telling you about how being remarried and a father of four has softened me up a bit…sanded down my rough edges so to speak. Though it sort of pained me to openly admit that, I felt obligated to finally own up to why I don’t write with the bitterness that once drove me. I also mentioned that, as a result, I’ve opted to change my New Year’s Resolution. I’ve decided that my wife and kids have made me want to be the best person I can possibly be, so I’m going to focus my efforts on being a better person. Don’t read into it! I’m not going to change my diet, start a gym regiment, go to church every Sunday, or wrap myself up in charity work. Let’s not get crazy, I just want to be less of a prick; I’m not lobbying for a humanitarian award or running for office.

I admittedly have substantially more pet peeves than most people and I let them affect me more than most would. It could be the fact that I’m a Pisces. It could be the fact that I’m a textbook type-A personality. It could be that deep inside of me there’s a homeless, sane person who unfortunately has set up camp right in the foyer of OCD. In any event, I let things irritate me that most normal people wouldn’t even notice.

So this week I’m going to present you with a partial list of people and things that used to piss me off that I’m going to attempt to no longer be bothered by as part of the new me. As the week progressed since my last column, this list got longer and longer the more I thought about it, so this may be a subject matter we return to from time to time. Some of these are just petty on my part. Some of these many of you may relate to. Some may bother you and you never realized it until I brought it to light. And for some, it may just hit a little too close to home. Don’t read too much into any of it, I’m just a lunatic with a lot of quirks. So without further ado, here are some things and people I won’t let bother me any more:

  1. People who back into parking spaces in an empty, or nearly empty parking lot. I don’t know why this bothers me, but it does. Unless you are planning a heist and driving the getaway car, I just don’t really see the point. There’s really no time saved or lost, it’s just used at different points on the timeline of your visit to wherever you are. What if the world were to end while you were in there purchasing a doughnut. Wouldn’t it bother you that you had wasted 12 of the last seconds of your life planning for the future? Live a little, park nose in and don’t take three tries to line it up. It’s liberating. But they won’t bother me any more.

  2. Blimps covering indoor sporting events. While this anomaly will perpetually befuddle me, I vow to no longer get irritated by it. Does anyone else find the ironic stupidity to this? We’ve all seen and heard it before, many of us don’t think like I do enough to be bothered by it, so I’ll give you the scenario. You are watching a sporting event that is being played indoors and at night. Suddenly, for seemingly no apparent reason, the announcer says; “aerial coverage provided by the Met Life blimp.” Then we immediately switch to camera 47 which is giving us a perfect view of the roof of a venue and its surrounding parking facilities. WHY?!! Your only hope at this point is that perhaps off in the distance but still on camera is a house fire or a high speed chase. Unless this is a really unnecessary and ridiculously expensive form of security, it’s the most pointless thing since any words ever uttered by Kathy Lee Gifford. But I’m not going to let it bother me any more.

  3. I’m also no longer going to be bothered by people mispronouncing the word ‘chipotle’. Now granted, it is a word from another language so I always gave a bit of a wide berth, but come on. It really doesn’t matter what language the origin of a word is if the letters are in a particular order. This annoyance isn’t quite the rampant pestilence it once was with the emergence of yet another crappy, corporate, pseudo restaurant, but it stills jabs at the logophile in me. But I’m not going to let it bother me any more.

  4. That girl who takes a selfie in her car at every stoplight and then decides once she gets to her destination which one will be her profile picture for the next 24 hours or so. This one pisses me off on so many different levels. First, because none of us need to see you posing with the back seat of your Honda Accord strewn with empty Starbucks cups and Chic Fil-A wrappers as a backdrop. At least have the decency to partake in your psycho Narcissistic ritual with a tree or a sunset behind you. Second, we all instinctively know that the only reason this picture happened in the first place is because you stopped at an intersection, looked in the rear-view mirror to admire yourself, and were so pleased with what you saw that you not only wanted to record it, but share with the entire social media world. Here’s a guys’ take on this ladies: conceited and unbecoming, please stop. And third, for whatever reason, approximately 80 percent of the girls shallow enough to do this invariably form their face into a duck bill. Ladies, I don’t know who told you all that men find this attractive. I can only assume that it was someone with a vendetta against you for humiliating them in their youth. It’s not at all hot, and you look just plain silly. I’m sorry to be the one to break the news and dispel the myth, but someone had to end this. Make no mistake girls, if this look were in fact as attractive as you think, I’d be setting up shop every day at sunset by the pond next to the south gate to Ocean Pines holding a loaf of bread and wearing my best clothes. I’m sure the ramifications would pale in comparison to dealing with a neurotic self absorbed chick like you. The only thing worse than those of you who pose like this, are those of you who have procedures done to keep the quack face all the time. It’s actually kind of funny the trends that come and go with women who think they are turning men on with them. Just a few years ago it was the Daisy Duke look, and now it’s the Daisey Duck look. But I’m not going to let them bother me anymore.

No sir, not the new me. I’m going to be a decent compassionate person this year who doesn’t get annoyed by all of these petty things. That’s not to say I won’t be writing about them though. We got up to item number 4 on an ever growing list that is already in triple digits. So I’m pretty sure we’ll be coming back to this at some point. I hope you enjoyed another bumpy ride through the abyss that is my mind.

Thanks for playing along. Until next week, Syd Nichols

Please feel free to send me your thoughts and input, or hate mail at sydnichols@yahoo.com