1. Strange men telling me to "smile" when I walk down the street. But it's not that I'm upset by the attention (or any attention), I just don't appreciate people telling me what to do. Catcalls, whistles and "hey mamacita"s don't bother me. (Heck, sometimes, I'll even say "hey" back.) But being bossed around does.
Today, on a my way for a run, (yes, I walk to a park, I run around it, and then walk back), dressed in faded track pants and a hoodie, I felt a man brush up beside me. He put his smiling face in mine and started saying way too much. I had my iPod on so I continued to ignore him, but when he kept blabbering, I finally pulled an earphone out. "You should at least get a greater pace going if you're going to exercise. Move those arms!" I put my earphone back in. I mean, really, what woman is going to be charmed by such advice or even demands of emotion, like smiling? (Okay, maybe one who doesn't have the same issues with authority as me.) Hell, maybe these guys just get off on the look of female contempt.
Sometimes known as "WTF"?
2. Cats. I realize now that it's not cats that bug me, it's cat people, or any pet owner for that matter. Why must they only talk about their animals? The same rules apply to people with children: Cutesy stories about little ones regurgitating breakfast are not interesting to people who don't have them.
My new roommate has a cat. She's kinda cute, white and fluffy; I can deal with her. (The cat that is; actually, the roommate, other than what follows, isn't so bad either.) But when I came home the other day, there was another cat. This one looked like every other gray straggler on every other street corner or in every other bodega. (Really, what is up with cats roaming down the aisles of the mini marts? Isn't there a NY health code against this somehow?) Whitey was not a fan of sharing her territory and went into hiding. Frenzy ensued. Trying to get Whitey out, talking about getting her out and the social breakdown of cats became the preoccupation of my roommate for the next several hours. I nodded and listened, when all I wanted to do was watch the "I Love Money" reunion show and eat my string cheese.
Okay, I get why she thinks I'd be interested in what's consuming her immediate world. Sure, I'm self-involved too. But at some point, when I notice people have lost interest or have stopped humoring me, I'll snap out of whatever diatribe I've ventured off on. (Another one of my pet peeves is boredom - being subject to it and inducing it.)
I think the "New York City Cat Meetup Group" needs to do more advertising. They have less than 300 members. (This may be a reflection of what I knew all along - people in NY have way better things to do than hole up in an apartment with a cat. Well, most do anyway.) I think social networking groups for cat people would not only rescue bystanders like me from nights like this, but these groups would also take care of the source of the problem. Such as why cat owners choose companionship with an animal that snubs most humans and looks perpetually pissed off.
(I was going to apologize for cattiness of this entire entry, but I think I'll apologize instead for using a bad pun and then pretending that I didn't purposely use it by apologizing and overusing parenthesis.)
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