Jeeves, I have this young guy at work who says that Tyres bothers him, it doesn't bother me. Do you have the origin for that? Why do we have a different spelling?

Bruyere, the tire/tyre spelling, like many of these things, seems to be an arbitrary evolution. An early 20th century English dictionary gives both spellings, but tyre won out (possibly to differentiate it from feeling weary).

From www.geocities.com/etymonline/t2etym.htm comes this information: tire (n.) - 1485, "iron rim of a carriage wheel," probably from tire "equipment, dress, covering" (c.1300), an aphetic form of attire. The original spelling was tyre, which had shifted to tire in 17c.-18c., but since early 19c. tyre has been revived in Great Britain and become standard there. Rubber ones, for bicycles (later automobiles) are from 1870s.

Oh my! You answered that so quickly! How refreshing!
Well that's what I tell my students of English, and this fellow. I told him there wasn't anything to fight about in our spelling, sometimes it was us sometimes the UK, who really cares? Just so long as we try to realize that the other version is just as valid.

I hate it the most when they have a rerun of one of my favourite TV shows. It makes me soooo mad!!!!

A couple of my pet peeves are..
people who drive for miles and miles with their turn signals on
catalogs who have to use the word "whimsical" to describe EVERY cute item (That word gets under my skin for some reason)
the little tear out/fall out cards in magazines...if I want to subscribe to the magazine or order the item bad enough, I would be willing to use scissors to cut a form out of a page! I go through magazines and take them all out before I read it.
people who treat me like I am stupid because I am female. I hate when they ask "Is there a man I can speak to?"
telemarketers who call me before 7:00 am and act shocked that they have woke me up......some of us work nights!

Alright, alright, so this is late and I'm awakening a dead topic but I just discovered this place. Cut me some slack.

My bigget pet peeve is this: When people can't seem to spell things right. Such as internet 'lingo.' 'You' is only two letters longer than 'u.' Big difference? I think not. And is it really difficult to reach over and press the shift key for 'i' to become 'I'? Honestly, some of these things just send me up a wall. Another new branch for the 'lingo' is new hip hop music. Such as Usher's 'U Got It Bad.' He's practically urging anyone who thinks they're someone to spell it that way. And, (this one really takes the cake,) is Nelly. 'Hot In Herre.' Herre, if pronounced as we learned in grammar school, sounds like 'hair,' which isn't even close to 'here.' Honestly, it just sends me up a wall. You're adding a letter, for crine out loud. Not even shortening it for easier readabilty or for smaller spaces.

Grrr.

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One of my biggest pet peeves.......

Whenever I go to the supermarket, I ask my 4 year old son numerous times "Do you need to go to the bathroom?" Answer: " No, Mommy, I don't hafta go." Just when I get to the checkout and have all my groceries on the conveyor belt---a little voice--"Mommy, I gotta go NOW. No, I can't hold it!"

If you ever hear news headlines "Woman in Halifax goes berserk in grocery store--strangles son" you'll know that it was me!

My other major pet peeve would have to be telemarketers. I hate having to make a dash for the telephone while in the midst of changing a dirty diaper, hoping that it will be my husband returning my call, only to hear "I'm calling to offer you....". It sends my blood boiling. I'm either too polite, (or too stupid) to hang up on them. I just let them give me their 'sales pitch' to which I reply "Sorry, I'm not interested". I actually had one guy say, "What do you mean, 'You're not interested?' I believe that was the one and only time I ever hung up on someone!

I agree with these last ones, I also got an obscene telephone caller one night after not sleeping for a week or two and trying to get a screaming newborn baby into the plastic bathtub everyone said you had to use..I got her out, got the phone, held her on me all squiggling around wet, and this guy says something obscene...I think his ear is still burning from the scolding I gave him, no holds barred! I mean, he heard the wrath of two sleepless weeks of tension, plus work, so bet he never tried that thing again! Man did that ever feel good!

I would also get many many wrong numbers there, they must have changed the numbers or something, and the people had totally different numbers! I'd be polite of course "no it's not that number here", but they'd say, "ok" hang up, then call right back up. It was driving me out of my mind! I called the phone company.

The phone company called back and said there was an error in switching and they were routing them improperly.

Telemarketing things, just got one the other day. They aren't as common here. Nobody messes with French dinnertime!
So I was taken unawares, and they knew my name. My son had entered a contest and they had his name so they wanted to sell us a subscription to a magazine. I told them that it wasn't nice, he'd entered a drawing contest, not a commercial gimmick. Otherwise in the States, it was answering machine time during that time of the day...I refused to pick up the phone without call screening!

Hey Bally, remember before you had kids and you gently raised your eyebrows at other people's kids at the checkout counter? Then you had your own?

I remember those days well. Those were the days when I had all the answers to people's parenting problems. I remember watching children in malls, giving their parents a hard time, and thinking, "Boy, if that were my child I'd..." Now it IS my child and others are looking at me with raised eyebrows. Those of you who are not yet parents, enjoy these moments, because it is the only and last time you will actually be a child-rearing expert!

I used to hate to see people giving their kids food they hadn't paid for...I laugh now! I was clawing open the bread package with the rest of them...oh yes.
Just remember that kids are reacting the way you'd like to...I mean you really would rather be somewhere else but the supermarket, you're tired, you're frustrated, you'd like to cry for your mom, and when they do it, it drives you bananas.
That put things in proportion for me.
Get the Berenstain Bears books for this, the tantrum one in the supermarket...then it turns them into little snobs as they look down their noses at other children pitching fits!

Kids can sense it when judgemental adults are around too...little devils! I remember a Real estate agent who was very very cold and we were visiting a house, eyeing my kids like they were demons, and they're reasonably well-behaved. Well they couldn't stand the house...and kept on asking us to leave.
Then the real estate agent who was a mom and who greeted them cordially and told them about the place they were going to visit...closed that deal! We even called her up when we moved to sell the house!

I'm back, and I've had time to discover a new pet peeve.
Automated fax dialers! If this automated dialer seeks my home PHONE number rather than the fax number, it will ring me twenty times. If I don't pick up, it won't stop ringing, and if I do I get the annoying sound of the fax trying to connect! I have tried to block the call, but it doesn't work! Honestly...twenty times. And I can't find out where it's coming from! Well, maybe I could, if I call the phone company.........happens about once every three weeks and it drives me BANANAS!

As for the opening packages before they're paid for at the grocery store....well, I wasn't very fond of that, either, though I did it myself standing in line at a check-out this summer! I had spent a few hours in a Walmart purchasing lotsa stuff for my daughter's college dorm room...and it was 35c...and I'd had it. No decision is an easy decision for HER! And as we waited in a lengthy line, there was a pop dispenser...cold soda! and you were to pay at the counter and I just grabbed one and opened it and guzzled! Maybe that's what you're supposed to do!

Also, once in the supermarket...my son was a three year old in a stroller and I suppose my hubby had the cart...and the stroller was configured so that my son was facing frontwards. We strolled along several aisles and I got some strange looks from the people coming at me. It wasn't until we were almost ready to leave that I realized he had grabbed a package of chicken legs in the meat section and was happily chowing down on the bone end the whole time! Cripes.

Going through the grocery store one day was a Mom with a little girl about 2 or 3 years old. The little girl was whining and crying and driving everyone in the store, especially her mother, crazy. All the while the Mom would quietly say, in a calm, reassuring voice, "It's okay, Tanya. We'll soon be through, and then you can go home and have a nap."

There was a man following behind them, who had been observing the whole thing. He approached the lady and said, "I admire the way you talked to your little girl. You were so patient and understanding with little Tanya. The mother looked at the man and said, "Oh. I'm Tanya. My little girl's name is Amanda.

I thought that was such a hoot!!

Nice ones ladies! Those are precious!
That chicken leg one just about killed me too...and Tanya, well it's only too real.

Got another one...but you have to promise not to laugh.
Just moved in to a nice place in Indiana, they had a lovely shopping center with a great delicatessen section and a couple of restaurants at the grocery store. We were exhausted from moving had no food in the kitchen and stopped at the restaurant. This shop had those little shopping carts for the kids. My son had one, he was 2 and a half, so we'd sat down, the kid only sits down enough to get sustenance and then goes to his shopping cart. We told him to sit back down, he refused...tried again, he refused again. He had things for his room in the cart and wasn't budging..holding onto it like grim death.
And then we asked him one more time. He just said "no" and ran the thing into the plate glass window...needless to say we just picked him up wailing about his cart, and took him out to the cart and heard this older lady say, "just look at that, it's just terrible."
Never ever separate a man from his new toy.

Sorry, Heather. Couldn't help but laugh though you must have felt like crying at the time. I bet these stories could increase the sales of birth control devices!

Someone, remind me once again that I will survive 'toddlerhood'

Dawn!

You will survive toddlerhood! I KNOW you will! YOU CAN DO IT!!!! Believe it or not, you will one day look back at all the antics and laugh. (I don't have any kids of my own, so I am using my brother's kids as way of knowing this.) Actually, the day will come when you want them back in toddlerhood!
When they get to the pre-teen days where they are testing their wings, wanting more freedom than they need at that age, testing their vocabularies (not words YOU would ever teach them, but what they learn on the playground), and going through all the conflict of wanting to be a kid one minute and wanting to be an adult the next, you will think fondly on the days of the terrible twos!


PS Which part of Indiana was it Bruyere? Must not have been too close to me, or else the story died down quickly. I am sure that in another 50 or so years you will be able to look back on it and laugh!

Maiers supermarket...the big one!
Hope the statue of limitations is up on that one.

Well all I hafta (eeuuw - what kind of word is that!) say is, Bru, be glad it wasn't in O'Malia's!

Oh, goody, I've been waiting for a post like this for a long time!

Let's see... my pet peeves are:

1. When someone says a word you don't know, and you ask "Pardon Me?" and they repeat the word! Yeah, like that helps! I have a friend who I IM constantly, and he types words I haven't heard, I ask him what they are, and he retypes them! :shakes head: *Oh, sorry, I didn't read that the first time.* Goodness gracious, just give me the definition!

2. People who decide they want to curse up a storm in public. Some words don't affect me much, (you have to consider, I'm a teenager growing up in the 21st century, practically everything has hit me at least once,) but when someone yells across the room "F*** YOU!" I get slightly annoyed. There is no need for that.

3. Braggers. :shudders: They bother me more than most anything. Such as saying that they are in an Honors class, and they capitalize it (HONORS). Well, I have a 4.00. I could be in honors if my small school offered it, but they don't. So I have to stick with normal, which is no problem. It's just that they don't need to just rub it in your face.

5. U for you and 2 for to and such. I don't frequent chatrooms so I don't see it when they do it in there but honestly, do they have to do it in the names of songs? "Hot In Herre." Herre, if pronounced like we were taught in grammar school, sounds more like 'hair' than 'here.' And for crine out loud, you're ADDING a letter, not even making it shorter! What is the point? Usher is famous for it (U Got It Bad) and I therefore refuse to listen to his music. Spell it right and I'll listen. You're losing business, you idiots!

6. People calling and deciding that I'm not capable of taking a message but instead choose to call later.

7. Being discriminated against for being 14. I can't help my age. I am more mature than half the seniors in my school and a fourth of the adults I've seen around. Why, just because I'm fourteen, am I not capable of doing things? Why aren't my points and comments taken seriously? I'm the future. If you don't listen now, do you think I'll really try when what I say really counts?

8. I have only had this happen a few times in real life, but it really bothered me. Since I live in Montana I'm not used to African American people. I have no problem with them, don't get me wrong, it's just that I'm not used to seeing a black face under a hood instead of the common Montana tannish one. So I tend to give a second glance. Not a stare, just another glance. They suddenly take offense and decide I'm racist, telling me "What you looking at?" in a huff. Excuse me? I beg your pardon, I didn't mean to make it look like I was staring or anything. I just wasn't used to your skin color. Golly gee, cut me some slack! I think blacks have gorgeous skin, much prettier than whites, but all of a sudden I'm racist for admiring it?

(As long as I'm on a roll....)

9. Being corrected for stumbling on a word. My best friend does this, until I ended up giving her the cold shoulder. She still does it but not as much as she did. I mean, when I say 'luch' (I have a piece of metal in my mouth!) I really do mean lunch. C'mon, give me a break. It's hard to have a retainer in and get all the words out right.

Okay, that's enough for now. Boy, did that feel good!

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My pet peeves are:
1. When someone calls and doesn't leave a message on the answer machine or doesn't even answer when you pick up.
2. Cash registers that can't ring the price up for an item.
3. People who are eatting, smoking, or talking on the phone instead of paying attention to the road while driving.
4. When a toddler at work say 'I poop' and when I check them, they didn't poop.
5. When I go shopping and my dad gets a basket when we have to end up grabbing a shopping cart.