My good friend (Hey Rat-a-tat Cat!) likes to rehang payphone receivers upside down because she’s awesome and always has been:
When I drove a company vehicle back in the day, I always drove through the EZ-PASS toll lane without a receiver.
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I do the same thing as @RogerStrong, and despite my best attempts, the resulting operator never wants to talk about how great my garden is looking right now.
Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try, though.
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I refuse to use the word “nauseous” to describe the sensation of being nauseated no matter what society says. (nauseous : nauseated :: poisonous : poisoned).
Also, if I order more than one burrito supreme I say “burritos supreme” instead of “burrito supremes.”
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I don’t think that’s rebelling so much as using english correctly. Oh, I see…
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As was mentioned in the Reddit thread, I also order a “small coffee of the day” at Starbucks (and practically anywhere I get coffee), but due more to my shitty memory than any sense of sticking it to The Man because I’m awesome and OUTLAW COUNTRY!!
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I turned off geolocation on my phone, and other services that apps can use to find out more about me and all my contacts and what’s on my calendar.
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English, dammit! Languages (and countries) are capitalized!!!
Was this an example of Muphry’s Law?*
*Looking back on what I typed, “languages” was not capitalized. Is there some sort of term for meta-Muphry, when you correct someone who committed a Muphry by doing EXACTLY what you’re saying they shouldn’t?
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I’m 43 and I have no interest in buying a house. Apparently this is somewhat rebellious. We may, when the kids have moved out finally, buy a condo - but we may also just get a nice apartment in one of those buildings with all the cool amenities. The cons of home ownership, for me, outweigh the benefits.
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Thank you. If you do consider the condo later, please remember the rules about condominium financing can be more byzantine for local lenders and hazardous for borrowers than the rules for single residence homes. And the consumer protection and enforcement for predatory lending is practically nonexistent. Lying, misrepresentation and fraud are all real, unpoliced risks.
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There was the time that my university paper printed an article about Trump on the front page and I changed as many of the front facing copies (especially those in the dispensing boxes) to copies I had defaced with the word “Asshole” written across the top and a Vonnegutian asshole scribbled across his face.
I have a philosophy for my life that pretty much goes like this: Don’t encourage the bastards. Otherwise they’ll just keep being bastards.
To that end, I very much just avoid engaging with certain people in ways that they expect. People who are trying to get a rise out of me just get the most laconic and boring response I can muster. I’ve worked customer service for a while, and the shittiest customers always got the worst service out of me and I became very uncreative about solving their problems. My goal? To elicit the following statement: “I’m never coming back here again!” So that I would never have to deal with them again.
I avoid filling out university professor evaluation forms, and when I do fill them out, the rating is always good (because I honestly never have had a bad professor) but in the comments section I go into lengthy diatribe, with citations and a bibliography, about some particular method the professor uses that I think too few question. Usually this is the use of Powerpoint in science classes- “What was on that information dense graph? Whoops, it went away.” combined with weird copyright embargoes on said Powerpoints. Just open source that shit, please. I know that you got half the stuff from Wikipedia anyway. I freely admit it doesn’t have to be evil, but Powerpoint really is the bane of my existence.
Other small rebellions just involve straight up doing things I shouldn’t, because the rule (whether it’s legal, institutional, or otherwise) is pointless, dangerous, or vague. It’s weird, but I’ve found that I rebel more as I get older. When I was younger, I was much more afraid of stepping out of line. Nowadays the first question I ask myself is whether or not it’s more pragmatic to break the rule.
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If I see people sharking for parking spaces when I’m walking to my car, I pretend like I’m on the phone. Some people still shout “ARE YOU LEAVING” at me. Jeez, people, drive a little further out where there are plenty of spaces!
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At big box parking lots, I like to walk a few cars down an aisle if someone is trying to vulture park on me, then cross into the next aisle before hiking out to my car located in the back 40.
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Have been known to send the email addresses of spammers to other spammers as possible contacts. But then, doesn’t everybody?
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I have totally done this. Especially when I had small children; it was going to take me a good 10 minutes to get everyone in the car and ready to go, stop impatiently waiting for me!
I follow some OKCupid blogs (because when you’ve been married for a decade it’s easy to laugh at awful dating stories) and most of the women, when asked for their phone number, will give that guy the number of the last guy who gave his number. So the douchebros end up texting each other dick pics.
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That is awesome!
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I enjoy sitting in a bathroom stall with the door open if there isn’t anyone else in the bathroom. I don’t know why I get a kick of out this.
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I once visited a Korean woman’s house in South Africa. She had an amazing house where you had to walk on stepping stones across a fishpond to get into the main entrance. All of the rooms were around the big fishpond in the centre. The bathroom had a big window facing outside over the valley (actually, not really a window - a big glass panel where the wall would normally be). You could sit on the throne with a full view of the South African scenery in front of you, and theoretically anyone outside could see in too (there weren’t any houses close by in the line of sight though). That woman is one of my heroes.
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My college roommate’s grandmother was wealthy. One summer we visited her home in Florida. I loved her bathrooms, which were very clever in how they were designed to open to the outside but still have privacy.
In the Master, the giant Jacuzzi bath had a picture window that overlooked the fenced in pool.
But the bathroom I loved the most was the guest bathroom, which had a mirror directly above the tub (it was more elegant than it sounds; the materials were high quality so it made a difference) and had a picture window that opened to a small private garden just for the bathroom. It was part of the landscaping that there were freestanding walls that held hanging baskets that created a visual barrier so no one could see from the outside directly to the bathroom. I thought it was a clever idea that anyone could adapt. Of course she had pretty elaborate landscaping, which helped, but I want to do something similar in my next home.
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I don’t buckle my seat beat on airplanes.
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