The sound of a well-hit tennis ball or baseball.
Soft, droopy ears of a small hound dog.
Making the first cut into a roast chicken.
Walking in sand without shoes.
Unlocking one’s front door at the end of the day and knowing that no work awaits one inside.
The heavy feeling of unread pages in one’s right hand when beginning a new novel by an author one loves.
Pulled pork barbeque.
The sharp outline of deep orange October leaves against a perfectly blue four-o’clock sky.
Fresh basil.
Hot coffee.
A laughing baby.
(See: The Pillow Book)
The cost of travel.
A pimple on the edge of one’s nostril. This is hateful in the extreme.
Any person with a knowing or superior tone, attempting to pontificate on subjects he does not understand.
Hit-and-run accidents.
Students who request appointments on days when one does not normally come to campus, and who then fail to show up for the appointments.
Fake British accents.
Fake American accents.
Hearing popcorn squeak between the teeth of the person next to one at the cinema.
Racism.
Tardiness.
Carelessness.
Smugness.
People who pull out their cell phones in the middle of a pleasant conversation to send a text message to someone else.
Carpeting.
Headlights shining into the front window of one’s apartment from a parked car outside.
Clogged pores.
Lipgloss that is so sticky it catches an errant hair and glues it to one’s mouth.
Bad plumbing.
A driver who refuses to use a turn signal correctly.
That one person in the restaurant whose voice carries across the room, above all others, and infects ones auditory environment with self-satisfied chatter, as if the rest of the room cared what he had to say.
(See: The Pillow Book)
When a student works with his teacher very closely on an essay revision and has many promising ideas, yet turns in a revised draft that looks almost identical to the first draft. This is depressing in the extreme.
Student loan debt.
Growing old without seeing anything of the world but the town in which one was born.
Being greeted by a friendly, grandfatherly old man working at the entrance to the Wal-Mart. Such a man speaks and moves slowly, with shaking hands and deeply sad eyes.
The idea of one’s parents aging.
Re-runs when new episodes are anticipated.
Empty storefronts, ramshackle houses, clotheslines overburdened with rags.
Voicemail for the wrong person, spam, hand-addressed letters delivered to the wrong address.
(See: The Pillow Book)
Dangling modifiers.
Carrying a futon frame up a set of stairs with an iron railing.
Answering the phone when the caller thinks one knows who he is by recognizing his voice, but one does not. This is awkward in the extreme.
Dining with people who assume everyone holds hands and says grace before eating.
(See: The Pillow Book)
Autumn air in the mountains.
A trip to the dentist.
Scrubbing one’s hands under hot water with a wonderful soap, then drying them with a rough towel.
A slice of lemon in a glass of cold water.
Ice.
Crisp, hot bed sheets fresh from the dryer.
Cold, salty wind blowing over the coast from the Pacific Ocean.
New underpants.
(See: The Pillow Book)
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