peeved

Is there one thing people do practically all the time, a small, insignificant thing that really shouldn’t bother you but, even so, makes you clench your teeth to keep yourself from screaming, “STOP DOING THAT! IT’S WRONG! WHERE’D YOU LEARN TO DO IT THAT WAY?”

For me, it’s when people say “reason why,” as in, “the reason why that’s important ….” I know “reason why” has a long history of use by the most respected writers in the English language, but it’s repetitive. If you said, “the reason that’s important …” you haven’t lost the meaning, and you’ve avoided being redundant. I’ve never been able to discover why so many writers believe the extra word is necessary.

And don’t even get me started on “the reason why is because ….” [HED ASPLODE]

Thank you so much for humoring me as I once again compulsively pick at a scab that I’ll probably never allow to heal.

And here’s what drives My Darling B up a rubber wall: license plates with more than one annual sticker, an annual sticker in the wrong place, or both. (Usually, it’s both.) It doesn’t bug her just because she works for the DMV. It is partly because she works for the DMV, but mostly it makes her want to hit people with a stupid stick because the State of Wisconsin mails the yearly license plate stickers along with a set of instructions that looks exactly like this:

It’s pretty hard to mess that up. You don’t even have to know how to read to follow directions as clear as that: month goes on the left, year goes on the right, and that’s it! There’s nothing in the middle, nothing up the sides, nothing across the top, yet every day we see license plates with stickers plastered all over them as we commute home from work, to much gnashing of the teeth belonging to the otherwise-nice lady in the passenger seat.

You now know her weak spot. Exploit it at your peril.