Andrew and Joy tried to explain her to me, but I’ve managed to forget everything about her (including her name) except for two things: the way she looks, and one of her pet peeves. “She has this thing,” Andrew said with a laugh, “about butt-warmth. It just grosses her out.”

Butt-warmth? What in the world? I assumed it was one of those terms that, while thoroughly confusing on first listen, made perfect and complete sense once it had been explained.

I was right: ‘butt-warmth’ is the perfect word to describe what her pet peeve was. If forced to define, it would be something like this:

butt-warmth, (noun): The noticeable rise in ambient temperature left behind after a person sits in a chair for a period of time, and then leaves the chair vacant for the next person.

This has to be an incredibly annoying pet peeve to have in crowded public areas. How annoying, if you have to take a seat that you find most repellent, just because there are no others available.

Even with that, it’s hard not to chuckle just a little, because pet peeves, no matter how much we want to deny it, are inherently funny. What is it about a quirk, a sound, an object, that makes us so twitchy that we will jump through hoops just to avoid it?

They’re like that annoying kid in the second grade whom you hated but just couldn’t get rid of. They’re the things you don’t tell anyone about, because they don’t make sense to you. Pet peeves are, by their nature, little things you twitch about but keep to yourself.

What’s mine, you ask?

Hair on soap.

This is not good if you’re someone who has hair halfway down her back, as I do. I wish I could express what it is about finding a hair on a piece of soap that makes my fingers arch into claws and turns me into a raging, digging virago, determined to make that poor, innocent piece of soap part ways from the hair that is wrapped around it just so I can finish my shower in peace.

Yes, I have been known to stop cleaning myself while in a shower, just to stand there and pick the single strand of hair off the soap. Given that I’m extremely nearsighted (and fair-haired), this requires holding the soap really close to my face and poking at it with my fingernails, until I triumph and can let the shower spray carry off the offending piece of hair to the drain.

What is it about the hair on the soap? I don’t know, exactly, but I do know that after using a bar of soap with a palpable hair on it, I want to claw my skin off. Given the choice between clawing my skin and clawing the soap, I’ll take clawing the inanimate object, thanks.

Jeff has never asked me about the divots in the soap—where they come from, why I’ve put them there, and why I continue making them.

This is probably a good thing.

(Now, about killing cockroaches…)