Lizing Large

I swear sometimes 30 Rock scares me. The “It’s Never too Late for Now” episode hit far too close to home, it’s taken me a couple weeks to process it.  In the episode Liz Lemon decided to give up and accept life as a spinster.  In addition to letting her appearance go, she decides to get a cat to help accept her new life  Maybe I thought I was the only single gal out there refusing to get a cat in order to avoid that stereotype, but clearly I’m not. Regardless I think it’s a pretty solid rule to live by.  I can’t even imagine what sort of sympathy looks I’d get if I told people I’d adopted a cat, if I got a dog on the other hand, people would be so excited and envious of me. Except that would never happen.  Single people can’t own dogs, it’s too much work.

When playing recreational sports as an adult why do people care about the outcome at all?  It makes no sense.  What is the point of winning, scoring, and alternatively what’s the big deal if you lose a game?  I think as adults we’ve all learned to win and lose throughout our lives, so we should be able to handle winning and losing a recreational soccer game pretty easily.  And like what is the prize of coming in first place in a recreational adult league?  It’s not something that you would ever tell someone at work or in another social situation where they would be impressed - no one else cares, so why do you? Sports for adults should be played for fun and exercise, nothing else.  

But also, don’t be one of those people who ever say (or order team shirts that say) “we’re a drinking team with a sport problem.”  That’s just as bad, if not worse. 

True, I don’t tend to smile at strangers as a rule.  When I worked in the service industry in high school/University I was constantly having people tell me to smile more.  Man that annoyed me, and as if it ever made me want to smile and be friendly with them, quite the opposite, I totally hated anyone who said such things to me.  There are two exceptions to this: cute old people and homeless men.  The cute old people thing is obvious, I mean, they’re cute and they deserve better service that other people, so it’s totally okay to smile and even joke with them if they say anything.  As for the homeless people, I know it doesn’t fully seem like a good thing to do, cause those guys can be pretty annoying and creepy too, but whenever I say ‘sorry I have no change’ and then they ask for a smile instead, I think it’s fair.  I mean they’re going through a rough time in their lives and even though I’m too principled to give them 25 cents, flashing a quick smile is pretty easy. 

Having a PVR I rarely have to watch commercials, but on the occasional times that I do, I often catch skin tag removal commercials.  I never even knew skin tags existed and now that I know they do, I wish they would just stop making commercials about them.  Every time the commercial comes on it makes me want to puke, and I’m not just saying that, I literally get queasy.  And who needs readily available skin tag removers??  Number one, why haven’t you gotten rid of that thing earlier?  And number two, go to a doctor to get it removed!  Do no do it yourself, that is horrible.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s name dropping.  I don’t mean name dropping famous people or whatever, I mean when you are talking to someone and they say something like “Steve is going to the Olympics.”  They don’t tell you who Steve is, but they say it like you should know.  I know it doesn’t seem to make a huge difference, but people should say “my friend from high school, Steve, is going to the Olympics.”  And I go one step further, I prefer to only refer to people as their relation to me (my friend, my brother, my boyfriend,  my manger, etc.) no one remembers names anyway.

I’m doing this volunteering thing with kids.  I get that part of my role is to be a positive influence and I need to be enthusiastic and whatnot to make the kids excited, but so many of the other adult volunteers overdo it.  Sometimes I feel like I’m in a room with a bunch of people whose dream job is to be one of those annoying adults on toddler TV programs. Don’t get me wrong, I love kid stuff, nothing would make me happier than being on Sesame Street.  But these people are too much, why do they have to overdo their excitement, I mean who actually likes to role play, why do they need to sing so loud, and why are they always hugging each other and smiling.  It just makes me uncomfortable. 

Today I decided to try a new burger place some friends have been raving about.  I went alone. Rather than eating my burger and deep fried pickles in peace I had to listen to a bartender cheer loudly at the women’s college volleyball game that was somehow playing on the TVs.  These were local teams too, like from Ontario community colleges.