On this day before Thanksgiving, I thought it would be nice to pause for a moment and take stock of all the things that really irritate us. With everyone talking turkey and gratitude and Thanksgiving recipes and decorations and crafts and activities and traditions and tips and hacks and shoving all that holiday cheer in our faces, it only serves to magnify the daily trials and frustrations of life that we are somehow supposed to ignore and just be happy. Well, I won’t be happy. There are a whole host of things for which I am not grateful and they deserve at least as much recognition as all the holiday cheer clogging up our news feeds and timelines and Pinterest boards. If we have to have a whole day dedicated to being grateful, then it’s only fair we have a whole day dedicated to being ungrateful. In fact, I suggest an annual Day of Grievances will only benefit our Day of Thanks. For only after we make it through the storm do we truly appreciate what we have.
So today, in hopes that this may become a nation-wide, annual, pre-Thanksgiving Day tradition, I will list all the things for which I am not thankful.
I’m not thankful for stupid people. Or annoying people. Or salespeople who cannot be bothered to greet you or get off their cell phones while completing a transaction. Um, that’s your JOB.
I’m not thankful for reward programs offering free drinks after the purchase of a certain number of drinks that then inform you, when you attempt to redeem your coupon, your free drink coupon has expired.
I am especially not thankful for people who saunter slowly straight down the middle of a parking lot as if cars are not directly behind them, attempting to navigate but are prevented from doing so all because of the pedestrians’ blatant disregard, which could be easily remedied with no inconvenience to pedestrians themselves by simply scooting over to one side or the other, but instead everyone in the whole God damn world must wait for the pedestrians to complete their trek while all parties involved are keenly aware that vehicles are quite large and forceful and, potentially, could ram into and run them over.
I am not thankful for celebrities with no talent or brain cells
I’m not thankful for cashiers who, when asked for tissue paper to cover over your purchases to prevent your kid from seeing what you bought since you have no choice but to shop with your child for her presents or otherwise risk buying a shirt in the wrong shade of blue, condemning it to languish in the closet, tags dangling from the sleeve, for the rest of its natural life, cannot locate the tissue paper after minimal effort and then ask a coworker for help and upon being given a clear response, identifying a large pile of white paper under the counter, the cashier approaches, squats down in front of and stares at the object in question before once again asking, “Where is it?”
I’m not thankful for needy kitties who want you to pet them every second of every day and meow and meow and meow until you relent and bend down to pet them at which point they scurry off because they want to be pet in a specific place and a specific place only and expect you to submit to their every desire yet don’t have any consideration for your work or your life or the many other responsibilities you may have.
I am not grateful for people who put Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving or radio stations that play non-stop Christmas music at any point prior to Christmas Eve because one day of continuous holiday joy is about as much as anyone can take. I can’t fault retailers for thrusting Christmas crap upon us as soon as the clock strikes midnight on Halloween. Retailers gonna retail.
I’m not grateful for kitties who besiege you with plaintive cries until you breakdown and pet them and then walk away two seconds later.
I’m not grateful for the Stouffer’s Lasagna given out by ShopRite at Thanksgiving as an acceptable meal and Thanksgiving alternative to the traditional freebie turkey or ham after the requisite $400 is spent. I don’t care if it is free. How can they sell that crap as fit for human consumption?
I am not grateful for kitties who demand to be pet and then sit just out of reach.
I’m not thankful for Finding Bigfoot or Swamp Monsters or Ancient Aliens or any other nonsensical, obviously fake crap that full-grown adults, typically middle-aged, single men believe in and dedicate their entire pathetic lives to and create fake, little research operations for and travel around the country in an attempt to make a discovery of something that doesn’t exist while film crews trail them as if something might actually happen.
I’m not grateful for children that look you in the eyeball and tell you they brushed their teeth when their breath says otherwise.
I’m not grateful for retailers who are open on Thanksgiving. Give it a rest. We can all go one day without commercialism.
I’m not grateful for children who, when you take them out to Starbucks and buy them a $10 Frappuccino, won’t share with you.
I’m not grateful for orthodontists.
I’m not grateful for people who steal your socks and your fleece jacket and your umbrella and the last few peanut M&M’s you had stashed in a safe place for a special occasion.
I’m not grateful for kitties who trick you into petting them and then bite the crap out of your hand.
I’m not thankful for winter.
I’m not thankful for Pinterest or Ello or Instagram or Snapchat or Vine or any other crap they can think up to waste time (except for Twitter) while actual real life passes you by.
So that’s it. That’s all the stuff I’m not thankful for. Well, almost. I’m not even getting into thereal things I’m not thankful for because I’m trying to keep this post positive and upbeat. But if you want to see more reasons to not be thankful check out Comfytown’s Thanksgiving post, which is a veritable history lesson, and which I plan on reciting at my dinner table this Thanksgiving.
I compiled this because I try to maintain a pretty healthy gratitude level regularly so I feel like being forced to be extra grateful is an unfair burden. Plus, nobody tells OFM when to be grateful. I’ll be grateful when I damn well please.
Ahh, that feels better.
So lay it on me. What aren’t you thankful for? You’ll be surprised at how much better you’ll feel. Tell me here or on Facebook where I’ll post this. Anywhere will do. I want this to be a safe place for us to express our feelings of ingratitude.
(This post originally ran on One Funny Motha.)
About the author: Stacey is the mastermind behind the humor blog, One Funny Motha, a site she sees as a refuge for rational people. Predicated on the belief that parenting is not nor ever should be an extreme sport, One Funny Motha provides incisive cultural commentary, also known as common sense. Her work has appeared on such sites as The Huffington Post, BlogHer, Scary Mommy and Mamalode, and in 2014 she was named one of the Top 10 Funny Parent Bloggers of the Year by Voice Boks. Perhaps most importantly, she is the proud founder of the Detached Parenting Movement, a child-rearing model she single handedly developed without any guidance or advanced degrees in child psychology. The woman’s a genius. Find her running her mouth on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and, of course, her blog.
