Contagious peevishness*

* I'd really prefer it if the commonly-used word here was "peevery". I find it a lot more fun to say.

Hermanito Scott made my Christmas Eve when he volunteered that he had adopted one of my pet peeves. Specifically, he now gets annoyed at airport baggage claims when people press forward, as close to the carousel as possible, to look for their bag. Essential to this behavior is that all members of the party - especially those small, frail, and with neither hope nor intention of retrieving a bag - stand along the belt. Since no carousel is large enough to provide a space for everyone trying to recover (or just look at) a bag, multiple ranks are formed; inevitably, abrupt "excuse me"s and jostlings are required as people from the latter ranks try to make their way to the belt to get their bags and then maneuver them back out through the crowd.

This is annoying because there is a very simple way to improve the whole process. If everyone would step roughly six feet back from the belt to watch for their bags: they would be able to see their bags just fine; in fact, they would see their bags more easily, as their view would not be obstructed by a wall of waiters; and they could quite easily step forward at the appropriate time, retrieve their bags, move away from the belt, and get the hell out of the airport, which is what they really want to do.

Kerry suggests that it is the burning desire to get the hell out of the airport that would ultimately prevent any sort of sensible, coordinated action like I am describing. People are tired of traveling, they think the end is in sight, and whatever immediate step looks to get them there the fastest is the one they will take, the other 200 people feeling the same way be damned. I think she's right. It's a very Hobbesian environment: nasty, brutish, and short - except for the "short" part.

I'm not writing about this because I think that baggage recovery is all that important, or that I think proselytizing will make a difference. What I find interesting is that my irritation was passed on to Scott. I think of these annoyances as being so personal; after all, we call them pet peeves. But this pet has found a new home, and a new master who will nurture it with clenched fists and bitter mutterings.

Incidentally, I'm no longer as bothered about the whole thing as I used to be. I mean, I'm right, but it's never going to change. I might as well get upset that the gravitational acceleration of falling bodies on Earth is 9.81 m/s/s, instead of a nice, round 10.

Hmmm.... that is annoying.