Annoyances

We are constantly being reminded of all the terrible things going on in the world by our news feeds, Substacks, email blasts, and Cousin Rudy, who calls every morning with his latest doomscrolling updates. I am fully aware that the end of the world could be only one bad bowel movement away by our current Commander of the nuclear football. God help us if the other Washington Commanders won’t change their name back to “Redskins” or refuse to call their new stadium Trump’s Colossal Colosseum, or reject his proposal for a giant portrait of his glowering face on either side of their scoreboard.

But these are not the annoyances that occupy most of my time. No, I can easily put aside my worries over climate change, fascist grifters, or the coming Robot apocalypse to focus on all the immediate irritations of daily existence. Take for example my guitar. I have been playing guitar for over 50 years and in all that time it has never been in tune. This is not because I don’t know how to tune, or that I don’t bother to tune, but rather that it is physically impossible to ever get a guitar to stay in tune. Yes, I have several different modern electronic tuners, as well as an app on my phone, that supposedly make it simple to tune a guitar, but no matter how close I get to having the instrument sound right it will inevitably be slightly skewed as soon as I start playing it.

I am not alone in my inability to stay in tune. Have you ever seen any band in concert? Why do you suppose they always take a break between songs to have the front man prattle on about what inspired them to write the next drunken love song, or where they came up with the idea of rhyming Amarillo with armadillo? It’s so the guitar player can try (unsuccessfully) to get in tune. Even the greatest symphony orchestras are not immune to this problem. The reason they give their upscale audiences those extensive program booklets is, so they’ll have something to look at while the musicians spend five or ten minutes before every concert practicing their avante-garde cacophonous prelude of desperate tuning. I’d estimate that the average professional guitarist or string player will devote an entire year of their lives trying to wrestle their instruments into something tolerable to listen to.

Finally, when we musicians have finally given up and said, “close enough for jazz”, the leaf blowers begin to blast their chorus across the street. Or the lawnmowers, or snowblowers, or chainsaws, or the infernal barking dog that the neighbors leave tied up all day in their backyard. The noise of the modern world is seemingly unending, but it never is louder than when you are trying to listen carefully to your own instrument, or your own thoughts.

Then there’s that fly. You know the one. You have no idea how the hell he got in the house in the middle of December when all the outdoor flies are dead, but there he is, buzzing around your ear. I recently had my primary care doctor call to reschedule an appointment, because he needed to have surgery. When I finally got to see him, he was limping and his leg was in a brace. I asked if he’d just had a knee replacement.

“No, I had an accident.”

“What happened?”

“There were a bunch of flies that must have hatched out in my kitchen, and I was going after them with a can of Raid. One landed on the floor, and I wound up slipping on the linoleum that I’d just sprayed and tore my hamstring.”

“Oh Doc, I’m so sorry. But the important question is, did you get the fly?”

“Yes I did!”

And what is the number one annoyance in most marriages? (And when I say “most marriages” I am extrapolating here based on one marriage in particular.) The answer is snoring. Maybe you didn’t hear the answer because of the snoring. What is perhaps worse than having to listen to snoring is being sound asleep and then being kicked in the shins awake because someone accuses you of snoring. But that’s not as bad as being awakened by loud snoring only to find that there is no one else in the bed, because they’ve given up trying to sleep and gone downstairs to get a snack, so you actually managed to snore so loud that you woke yourself up.

If anything like this ever happens to you I have a wonderful piece of advice. But I’ve come to realize lately that one of the most annoying things in life are people who insist on giving you a piece of advice that you didn’t ask for. So, I’m just going to stop here. You can thank me later. Or you can just be annoyed.