The Eighth Sin

If there were an eighth sin, it’d be deplorable manners.

This comes in a variety of forms. For instance, once upon a time I sat down at uni. The setting was this: I’d just had an exam, or a test, or something. The weather was poor so I sat down for lunch. Two seats away a girl sat, snapping her gum. Loudly and repeatedly. Snap. Snap. Crack. Crack. Snap. On and on and goddamned on, until I put away my lunch and played music through my earphones very loudly. I’m not easily given to violence, but this just made me furious. 

And now I’m in a ranty mood so here’s number nine: poor vocabulary. Overusing ‘like’ is the worst offense for me. I’ve written about this before, but I think it bears repeating. It tells me that someone is so impatient to speak they don’t stop to filter; they just open their jaws and yap on. Similarly, using filler words to get out a sentence is teeth-grindingly annoying for me. ‘So this really annoys me, you know?’ –  here, it’s the ‘you know’.  It  tells me that you lack conviction in what you’re saying –  you’re confident enough to say it but you’d like me to affirm what you’re saying somehow.

Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox now.