How Incredibly Annoying Other People Are

Alternative titles: “How We Can Go from Bliss to Hell in an Instant” (or vice versa, but that’s a footnote) or “How Impossible Life Is.”

Two examples:

At the Concert

Finally the eagerly anticipated evening has arrived: excellent seats for a concert featuring a gorgeous classical piece I’ve been wanting to hear performed in-person for decades. The applause die down after the featured soloist bows. All is hushed as we await the conductor’s first gesture with his baton. Then the heavenly sounds begin to waft from the stage and into my ears.

            But after a few minutes I notice a motion out of the corner of my eye, and then hear a slight rustle. The person I have brought with me to share this blessed event is reading her program and turning the pages!

            This upsets me on two levels. One is the revelation that my friend does not share my total involvement in the music. The other is the brute interference with my listening experience. (A third element is that I would be equally bothered on behalf of anyone else sitting nearby.)

            My reaction could therefore be described as a mixture of disappointment (at discovering this lapse of simpatico), perplexity (at how a human being could not share the rapture), annoyance (at having my personal experience interrupted by extraneous motion and sound), and disapproval (of someone showing such disregard of other people’s enjoyment – though, if not quite moral disapproval, since after all she was trying to turn the pages quietly, then aesthetic disapproval, of how she could fail to appreciate the absolute stillness and silence people who really appreciate this music require). And all of these feelings were at a high level.

            I therefore spontaneously motioned her to stop turning the pages … forcing a big, friendly smile onto my face. But I knew immediately that this had been a mistake, for my friend has a sense of her own prerogatives and dignity perched prominently on her shoulder. She scowled at me. The evening was ruined … and so was my enjoyment of the rest of the piece we were listening to.

Of course the best “solution” would have been for me to do nothing whatever. Even better would be for me not to have the feelings in the first place, or at least not so acutely. However, it is impossible for me to vanquish such feelings. Believe me, I’ve tried over the last half-century, but they have proved to be hard-wired. Also, it would be throwing the baby out with the bath water, since the disapproving feelings are but the flip side of my capacity to adore the music as much as I do.

But I fully appreciate not only the social disutility of having the feelings (which leads inevitably to acting on them) but also the justice of my friend’s annoyance with my annoyance, since when you get right down to it, there is no right or wrong here but only conflicting preferences. Yes, it would be “nice” of her to accommodate my sensibilities. But it would also be “nice” of me to accommodate hers.

This won’t happen. So we each have a choice in the matter. Mine is whether not to go to concerts with her anymore, but that could mean I go alone, since a good concert buddy is hard to find, or I don’t go at all, since it’s much less fun and even painful to me in ways; or to continue to go with her and be the ‘gentleman” who (condescendingly) “puts up with”  her aesthetic crudeness and unfriendly selfishness … thereby feeding the resentment (probably on both our parts) that is the hallmark of so many long-term relationships.

Get Me to the Plane on Time

We were on the last day of our vacation abroad. The only item on the agenda was to get to the airport. It was a two-hour drive in our rental car, but I had scheduled the return flight to allow ample time without having to get up at an ungodly hour. I had explained all the arrangements to my traveling companion, and so I fully expected her to be packed and ready to leave at the appointed hour.

            Imagine, then, my surprise – let us say shock – when that hour arrived and my friend told me she had decided at the last minute to wash her clothes before leaving. The clothes were now in the washing machine, and they would still need to be dried. When I expressed my dismay, she said that maybe she could bring them along wet, but she didn’t know how to stop and drain the washing machine. I could not figure it out either. All I could see was a jouncing mass of suds.

            I was foaming too … at the mouth. We were stuck. Now we would have to rush to the airport. I hate rushing. All my plans, beginning months before with the effort to find the right return flight, out the window. Our predicament was completely unnecessary. It simply made no sense: Why would one need to wash one’s clothes just before returning home (where she has a washer and dryer), especially when it would put so much at risk?

            But I also knew how this had happened. My friend has a problem with time management.  In fact it is clinical, and she takes a pill for her general condition. But the pill only moderates the problem, and who knows if she was even taking it on vacation?

            Anyway, all this meant in terms of my own feelings was that any “outrage” on my part was unjustified. If I were a perfectly rational being, this would thereby have eliminated or diminished my annoyance at her, if not my dismay, since somebody cannot be to blame for something if they couldn’t help doing it. But since I am not perfectly rational, I was actually in a worse emotional position: of both being annoyed at her and being annoyed at myself for being annoyed at her.

            And to top it off, when we did finally reach the airport, and with what I thought was plenty of time to spare, I ignored my friend’s urging that we get right to the boarding area. I saw no reason to rush. There was stuff to see and do in the terminal: Why be stuck just sitting in the boarding area? But as it turned out, I had completely overlooked the possibility that we were in fact some distance from the boarding area. I was shocked to discover that it was in a different building, and we had to take a train to get to it. Then there was an interminable walk (run) through corridor after corridor. We made it to the plane just narrowly.

            What a fool I was. And she let me know it, after having been on the receiving end of my annoyance at her dilatory actions that morning (for which she had more of an “excuse” than I did to boot).

Life is awful. Where can I get off? Hope I don’t miss the rocket ship.

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