Things that annoy you...

Government has raised the price of my tobacco brand by £2 overnight.. £2 !!! 😡

If I saw that Keir bloke he would be facing a shit storm.

Temu coupon codes.... especially dozens and dozens of Temu coupon codes.

Edt - and now they're gone.... phew

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Completed Extant Filmographies: Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Satyajit Ray, Fritz Lang, Andrei Tarkovsky, Buster Keaton, Yasujirō Ozu - (for favorite directors who have passed or retired, 10 minimum)

Who has noticed how wording something can influence perception of meaning and carry negative connotation? Like today, my dad and I went to my ex-wife's house to get the kiddos because her car died, and I mentioned to the older kiddo about getting the case for a game, there was a mishap with it a weekend or two ago and the case went back with them and not the game, and he asked his mom what happened to it, and she roughly responded, "I don't know what you did with it," and it turned into an argument.

I get that it can be annoying when something goes missing. When I misplace stuff I get annoyed. Still I couldn't help and think, "Wouldn't it be better to say it, 'I don't know what happened to it. Did you check here or there?'?" Doesn't that sound less accusatory? I know the basic meaning is virtually the same. It's just the latter way sounds way more cooperative and meshy.

There are a lot of reasons why we divorced. Stuff like that is one of them. It's just so irritating that everything is an accusation.

Addendum; when I asked him about the case, I didn't have any negative fluctuation in my voice. I just wanted to see if he could go get it. When I realized he didn't know where it was and couldn't find it, I told him we'd just keep good track of the game until the case turns up. I don't tell people "You screwed up" at all. I find a way to build the person up.

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I destroyed the dastardly dairy dame! I made mad milk maid mulch!

Wow I just called my water company to see if the payments I made through the post office were gone through okay and they hadn’t registered yet, well okay but then this dude is talking a hundred miles an hour in some heavy northern accent I’m struggling to follow and after a couple minutes I’m starting to lose the will to live and then he ask me when I will make the remaining payment which is like 7 quid and I’m like I’ll pay it when I pay it mate, mildly annoyed.. and he starts yapping a bunch more and I miss most of it and then “why didn’t you make these payment sooner” and silence .. my reply was not friendly but in hindsight probably too nice as well, what a jerk.

You’re in England, I’m in New England & we have the exact same day. I got soaking wet on my walk & have gone through 2 or 3 pairs of wet socks.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

**** off.

It looks exactly like the banana I bought for lunch today. Darn it. I should have saved it & dug out the duct tape.

My neighbour is being an absolute **** to her child. This has been going on for some time, but is getting worse now, she screams at him like crazy, like a sociopath, calls him names, every few days this happens. He mostly cries but also screams like she’s hurting him, though it seems like psychological violence mainly. I can hear all this in detail, pretty much every word, through the ridiculous British walls. He’s maybe ten/eleven, so I feel like he’s really vulnerable.

At first I thought I was overreacting/exaggerating it to myself, but now thinking I might report her to social services. I really am very sensitive to sound and hear the tiniest of noises, so it is much tougher for me to feel like this isn’t my business because I hear every word. The mother is Eastern European (as am I ethnically, before anyone says I’m discriminating), and she screams at the kid in this vicious, brutal way that I cannot describe (which, at least in my experience, is somewhat part of the Eastern European communication culture, broadly speaking). She scares him. I had a discussion about something similar with my family a few years ago (in the abstract at the time) during the holiday season, and they all effectively said the kid is better off with his mother.

Now this thing is happening, and after I told my best friend I’m thinking of reporting the neighbour, she flat-out told me social services wouldn’t do anything because there isn’t any sexual or physical abuse (and that she, too, feels the kid is still better off with his mother). I am so angry at her, but don’t want to fight; besides, she’s one of those no-nonsense people — that’s what I like about her — so she’s probably right here, too. But I’m so tired of people being so revoltingly pragmatic. Sometimes someone just needs to do something, ‘just because’.

So now I’m just losing my mind. I do really love children and have always been able to connect with them, so maybe this is hitting me harder than it would someone else. But I don’t want to acknowledge this woman when we pass each other in the street; I haven’t really been saying ‘hello’ to her in months because when I see her, all I can think of is protecting the kid and I just can’t find it in me to speak to her, she says ‘good morning’ and I stare. Her husband doesn’t seem to care that she’s doing this to the kid (not his son). I will almost certainly report her, but my best friend is of course correct that it’ll likely go nowhere. So now all I can hear is the kid crying in my head, and I want to cry, too, and on top of it all feel completely isolated because everyone except me seems to think screaming at a child daily is completely reasonable. Am I on the wrong planet?

All of which is to say, here’s something that annoys me — the understatement of the year.

I always say go with your gut when it comes to things like the above AgrippinaX. The amount of times I've heard about a case involving a child and a call to social sevices or the police would have stopped worse to come.

East european or not, sounds like the mother needs psychological help.

You are not on the wrong planet, you don't treat a child like that.

If you decide to report, you need to report something like below:

This is what one UK site has for example. CitizensAdvice:

Emotional abuse

Emotional abuse is treatment which causes serious damage to a child's emotional development.

Examples of emotional abuse include when someone:

constantly or unfairly punishes a child

doesn’t show a child they’re responsible for any affection

tells a child that they’re worthless

doesn’t give a child opportunities to express their views

prevents a child from taking part in normal social activities

lets a child see or hear the abuse of someone else

bullies a child, causing them to feel frightened or in danger - this includes online bullying

Thank you so much — I needed this. Will report it.

Ugh, I would be a wreck in this situation. Nothing I could say would help you.

I am. And yeah, I just needed to get this off my chest somewhere, no one I talk to in real life understands. ****ing pragmatists.

You can always talk here.

I really do value this place, introverted as I am, I can very rarely tell anyone what I actually think about almost anything, so that gets pretty lonely.

When you feel lonely come here & chat with someone.

People are saying there’s an epidemic of loneliness here in America & I must admit I feel lonely sometimes even though I’m married.

Why is it that when one is looking for a single sheet of paper that has important information, that single sheet of paper will not be found. It never fails.

Thank you. I do.

Not just in America, I would say. People are losing the ability to forge and maintain strong friendships, and so on. I’ve always been introverted but ended up making three close friends, I feel it’s a lot and put a lot of effort and thought into making sure these relationships thrive. Even so, I suppose there’s only so much one can control when it comes to that. I always try to give people space, and all that.

I do hope to settle down eventually, always did, but, alas, I’m not easy to live with, so putting that side of things on the back burner for now. Everything you say about your marriage always brings a smile to my face, so it sounds like you’re very lucky. Gives one hope!

One thing that stood out to me (and correct me if I misunderstood) was that you won't talk to or greet this brutal neighbor mom.

That's totally understandable as most rational people would go out of their way to avoid such a person, but maybe (and this is a long shot) if you changed this approach it might end up changing things for you (even if it doesn't change anyone else).

What if, instead of avoiding this woman, you said hello to her if you passed her? And eventually maybe even struck up conversations? You could possibly, tactfully drop hints as to the behavior you've observed (perhaps by using the old "friend" tactic - someone who doesn't exist but who happens to have some of the same challenges this lady has). Or perhaps you could share stories about how children turned out to be great successes due to the love, respect and support their parents showed to them.

I'm not saying this will change anything, but it's worth a try. Sometimes when we observe the good examples set by someone with a good heart like yourself, it can change something in us.

I realize this is a bit of a Pollyanna strategy, but it probably can't make things worse, and may have a positive effect on how you feel about the situation even if it only serves as a way to say you proactively took a step to address the situation before resorting to getting authorities involved.

No, I totally get that. And in the interest of expedience I didn’t necessarily paint a full picture, of course I’ve spoken to her many times — and her husband, and the kid — as we’ve been neighbours for two years. I’ve had an intense few years myself, and her son only came to join her a bit later, some time after she moved here, so her son has been living next to me for about a year and a few months, and things only seem to have gotten this dire fairly recently. I used to greet her and I somewhat acknowledge her now, but yes, I do try not to cross paths with her when I can help it because all this is seriously stressing me out and the screaming and shouting at their place is definitely getting worse.

I mean, I’ve worked with kids all my life (babysitting, tutoring, etc) and in my experience, parents hate to be told what to do or ‘suggested to’ when it comes to anything to do with how they raise their kids. But interestingly, just before you responded here, I was speaking to a family friend on the phone and he suggested something similar-ish, i.e. telling her that there could be concerns raised about how she treats the kid and to be careful in case someone felt there was cause to involve the authorities. He’s a lawyer, so he would know, and he has kids. That sounds like a middle ground of sorts to me, but I also feel like it’s cowardly of me and it’s not enough.

But I’m not going to lie, I can be quite harsh and categorical when it comes to kids. I am fiercely protective of kids, have been all my life (I was a weak child, with health issues, so yes, I’m biased, but I just don’t see any rationale or excuse, any at all, to behave like she does). I don’t want to make this too political, so I’ll leave it there, but I have all sorts of slightly more charged thoughts on the subject.

Anyway, I don’t mean to hijack the thread with this situation. Everyone’s input has been invaluable and I’m pretty clear on what I’m doing, so I will leave it there. It was really therapeutic to talk about this here.