The Color Whisperer: Navigating Annoying People.

I’m pretty sure you know some annoying people. Annoying people are everywhere: they’re as common as porn videos on X.

PS: Elon Musk now officially allows porn and adult content, so I guess the name X makes more sense now. I know, is very annoying.

They pop up everywhere, at work, on buses, in grocery stores, and anywhere humans gather to breathe the same air. Im talking about annoying people, but I can very easily say the same thing about porn videos, they pop up anywhere, unexpectedly. Annoying.

Just the other day, I heard a comedian waxing poetic about the joys of dealing with annoying people at work. According to him, this is why he can't hold down a "real" job—he'd have to endure eight grueling hours surrounded by a carnival of irritants. Maybe you're nodding vigorously in agreement right now. But let's not forget, there's a slim chance the true annoyance is the comedian himself. After all, comedians can be incredibly irritating, especially when they fail to read the room and keep the joke train rolling right off a cliff. Or so I’ve heard.

But I don’t work in a big office, my exposure to annoying people is limited. I do, however, attend gatherings with friends, which can sometimes feel like a live-action social experiment in human endurance. I can be sitting there, in silence, I’m nodding along to the conversation, the next, I’m mentally redesigning my dream home on Mars or wondering if penguins have knees. One minute, I'm right there with everyone, the next, I'm on a beach somewhere, sipping a piña colada and having a deep conversation with a seagull about the meaning of life.

The best advice for dealing with annoying people is to avoid becoming one.

I’ve been sitting here, tapping away at my keyboard with the precision of a cat walking across a piano, and as I write this,  I can't help but chuckle at the irony of  “being witty” which sometimes means being annoying. It's like the Swiss Army knife —multifunctional and potentially dangerous if used incorrectly.

While we can't do much about that guy who insists on loudly slurping his soup in the quiet of the office lunchroom or that friend who shares every meal on Instagram as if it's the Mona Lisa of spaghetti Bolognese, we do have a say in whether we become the human equivalent of a mosquito buzzing in someone’s ear by shutting your mouth. Let's face it, nobody wants to be that mosquito.

I want to reflect on the times I’ve turned into a human mosquito myself (annoying as a verb), buzzing around, and making everyone itch.

Let’s dive into this delightful dilemma with a sense of humor and a sprinkle of self-awareness: you can decide whether to be the pleasant background music or the incessant infomercial about a miraculous mop nobody asked for. The key is awareness.

Note to self: Next time I catch myself about to launch a joke as tasteless as vegan food, It might be time to hit pause, and keep sock-absorbed in important questions:

Do fish ever get thirsty?

If a turtle loses its shell, is it homeless or naked?

Why do we park in driveways and drive on parkways?

Can you daydream at night?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, in the spirit of sparing my poor brain cells from the trauma of writer's block, save those pearls of wisdom for my writing endeavors and stash those golden nuggets away. My creativity has been playing hide-and-seek under the bed for the last few days. If I had a dollar for every time my muse took a vacation without telling me, I’d be able to afford therapy for all the emotional trauma it’s caused me... but knowing my luck, my therapist would probably be on vacation too. My point is, that just because you're a comedian, it doesn't mean you get a free pass to be a jerk.

Exhibit B:

“Comedian Punched In Face Over Sexual Joke About Father's 3-Month-Old Son“

https://bit.ly/4aMuY67

Maybe all we need is a safe word, something that indicates to me that I need to be quiet, maybe a sound?

https://bit.ly/3V9WxAv

Another way to keep me quiet and the chatter in my head at bay, Is to overload my brain with so much information that even Google starts to feel inadequate.

J, my beautiful redhead sidekick, is always pulling new stunts to keep me on my toes and trying to catch me off guard. Surely, stripping down to her birthday suit works perfectly fine for me, even if is only in my mind, shocks me into temporary silence.

How many times I can play that card before it starts losing its wow factor? -she asked.

Not nearly enough.- I said.

It's like a never-ending game of mental strip poker, and J always holds the winning hand.

Now, last weekend J unveiled a new eye-popping trick, a mind-blowing stuff that left me more speechless than a mime at a spelling bee. My brain went into the mute mood, leaving behind nothing but elevator background music. Do you know that in relationships, there are red flags and green flags? Well, when it comes to deciphering them, I'm about as clueless as a mosquito at a nudist colony.

I've always been colorblind to those signals, literally.  But not J—oh no, she has become my flag whisperer, waving reds and greens all around. She should've given me a heads-up and thrown me a lifeline, maybe even let me swap out my safe word (HARDER) beforehand.

It’s like meeting thousands of people, wading through a sea of faces, each one as serious as a tax audit, and not one of them even tickles your funny bone, and then suddenly, and just when you're about to give up hope on laughter, you stumble upon that one person who not only rewrites the script but to highlight every page, even throws in some sparkly illustrations, making even the footnotes feel like confetti exploding in your brain. J takes the mundane and turns it into a Technicolor dream, making you realize that life isn't just black and white—it's a whole rainbow of hilarity waiting to be explored.

PS: Shelby, don't fret. I'll keep an eye on her like a hawk with a PhD in babysitting.