La Rosa Knows

There are defining moments in everyone’s life where they realize they do, in fact, have a pet peeve. Yesterday, I had one of those moments.

To be clear, I have many pet peeves. Some of which include: dairy left out on the counter, lack of turn signals, men who drive white cars, tourists who stop in the middle of the sidewalk to look at a map, spitting, origami leftovers, and the list goes on.

But yesterday, while driving home from work, I got stuck in a bout of Los Angeles traffic. While not uncommon, it caught me on a day where all I wanted to do was go home, eat an uncomfortable amount of food and sit on the couch for a good long time. Instead, I languished in my Prius and waited for whatever was causing the bottleneck ahead of me to clear.

Then I approached the cause of said bottleneck and discovered that there had been a small fender bender. The two cars involved had decided that rather than pull to the side of the road, like decent hominids, they would remain in the turn lane, thus preventing any through traffic.

That was sweet of them.

My knuckles turned white as they tightened on the steering wheel and I softly muttered horrifying curses in their direction.

This careless traffic jam was not my pet peeve, however, it’s what happened next that really needled my easily irked core. A little song called, “Don’t Worry Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin came on the radio as I waited to pass the pileup. Don’t worry, be happy. Innocent, really, and simplistic in the message. In fact, one could argue it was sound advice considering the situation. Don’t worry about this little hiccup, be happy your car wasn’t hit!

The thing is this: don’t tell me how I should feel, radio. By that song playing, I was unwittingly saddled with an overly optimistic friend who couldn’t understand that I’d had a crap day and needed to wallow in it. There was no sympathy in this friend’s lyrical response, no feelings of camaraderie. Instead, this friend had somehow won the life lottery and all he/she wanted to do was spread the love by whistling a happy little tune. As if life is that simple.Obviously I did the only thing I could and scowled at the radio before shutting it off for good.

Pet Peeve #789,921,045,629,000: Unduly dogmatic songs while stuck in traffic.

Anyone else feel me on this one?

• Tags
• automobile
• car accident
• neurotic
• pet peeve
• traffic
• my life