My mother called me out on it, as mothers so often do.
“Why do you always get to ask what I’m reading,” she demanded in her still thick upper Midwestern accent, “but I can’t ask what you’re reading?”
“Because it’s not annoying to me when I do it,” I said.
I realized in that moment that I am probably the Ultra Mega Super Trooper Queen of Hypocrites. Sure, we’re all guilty from time to time. But I believe that my innate moody bitchiness, which propensity has through the years been amplified by the rather unfortunate condition of my being a spoiled and indulged only child, has lead to a level of unreasonable-ness in the hypocritical sector that would be difficult to beat. For example, here are five annoying hypocrisies that I perform on a semi regular basis that I was able to spew out almost without thought:
- “What are you reading?” The bane of all those literature freaks who can’t stop themselves from reading in public. Often followed by such obnoxious follow ups as: “I haven’t heard of that, what’s it about?” “Is it porn?” “Do you know what I was reading the other day?” and/or suggestions of other books you might rather be reading than the one right in front of you. BUT: As indicated by the above conversation, I will be the first to ask you what you are reading.
- Bodily functions. Your burps, farts, itching of dry skin, and knuckle crackings annoy the piss out of me. I cannot stand your sniffles when you have a cold, or the incessant coughing that attends it. BUT: with the exception of knuckle cracking I do it all, and I furthermore expect everyone to feel very sorry for me when I’m sick, cook me soup, and buy me expensive lotion infused tissues.
- Eating. Watching people eat is gross and weird. BUT: I eat all the time.
- Talking during movies/TV shows. Seriously, people, shut the fuck up. It’s rude, and then you miss something that happens, and then you have to ask me what’s going on two minutes later because you were so busy talking you lost track. BUT: If I’m talking it’s because I have something really awesome and clever to say. (Ok, but in my defense I really do have half the IMDB memorized so I’m sort of a fountain of knowledge)
- Annoying drunk people. I don’t think I have to get into the “BUT” here.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, the ones that came to me right away. If I did a field study of myself (which is totally something I would do), it would probably reveal up to 300 hypocritical tendencies. However, having said all that, I do think there are at least five people who might defeat me in the race to be elected Secretary General of Hypocrisy.
- Guy Fieri (Foodnetwork host). His real name is Guy Ferry, and he never went to cooking school. This could possibly be forgiven if he didn’t wear his sunglasses on the back of his head and dye his weird spikey hair platinum even though he’s in his 40’s.
- Paula Deen (Food Network host). She has diabetes folks. Just saying.
- Charlie Sheen. Because he claimed to be winning. His demise may have had you tickled, highly entertained, rolling in the aisles. But Charlie Sheen is not, I can assure you, winning.
- Mel Gibson. I mean, seriously, Mel Gibson, what the fuck. I thought you were hot in “Braveheart,” and now that just feels totally dirty and wrong. Like almost as dirty and wrong as I feel for being attracted to Tom Cruise in “Far and Away” before I realized he’s short and crazy. Anyway, blah blah, Mel claims to be super Catholic and good but in fact despises the world and unleashes his tirades in drunken recorded conversations. You know the story.
- Ghandi. I don’t know how much of this is true, seeing as how I got all my information from shady internet sources. Also, I feel compelled to mention that I don’t know much about Ghandi in general. Apparently if you never appeared on the Food Network then I don’t know fuck all about you. But, for the sake of this list I’m choosing to believe everything I read. Ghandi was a racist pedophilic bisexual. Ok, who cares if he was gay, bi, whatever, that’s just a salacious slice of gossip. But racist? Seriously? An Indian dude, one of whose biggest fans was Dr. King? Yep. He didn’t like black South Africans. And he slept naked with young girls. Shame, shame, Ghandi! You are the front runner for nabbing my hypocrite crown!
