Pretzels Dont PourTo begin at the beginning, in case you didn’t know, pretzels don’t pour. To which you might reply with “who would expect them to?” Well, I would. In case you haven’t noticed, the bags that pretzels come in are considerably more fragile than regular chip bags. Regardless of how careful you are, if you are lucky enough to open it without tearing it down the side, the second time you reach in for more pretzels (again carefully) a jagged tear will appear.

The tear is always such that any further handling of any sort will cause the bag to begin the various stages of disintegration. When it happened again the other day, I grabbed a quart size baggie and attempted – for the umpteenth time – to pour pretzels into a baggie. At first, they poured as easy as stick-shaped objects can. Then they began to catch on the curled up edges of the pretzel bag.

I tried to gently jerk the bag to coax the pretzels into falling into the baggie. At which time the bag began to give way further, sending pretzels onto the counter and – to my chagrin – a few onto the floor. The more I tried to be careful, the faster the bag fell apart. I ended up having to pick handfuls of pretzels off of the counter and put them in the baggie. Which worked only a tad better than trying to pour them out of the bag.

I finally got the pretzels into the baggie. Minus, of course, the few that fell onto the floor. But not without some serious consternation on my part. A major cause of the consternation was the fact that I saw it coming. But even though I saw it coming there was little I could do to alter the circumstances.

And that is one of my pet peeves – I firmly believe that you can have more than one. When I see a situation coming in which I’m sure things will go awry, it ticks me off. I sometimes think I’m daring the situation to prove me wrong for a pleasant change of pace. Then, by God, it goes awry just like I thought it would. Which ticks me off even more.

I have other pet peeves as I’m sure you do. People refer to someone’s pet peeve. As if there is only one peeve and that one is the pet or favorite. It sounds as if it is special rather than a pain in the ass.

I’m sure God has quite a few pet peeves. The Old Testament illustrates a few. Breaking a commandment is a safe bet to touch on the real favorites. That is, if you equate “pet” with good or favorite.

But at the same time, God is forgiving. While I can be forgiving, I’m not as forgiving as I should be. If I was, it wouldn’t bother me as much that pretzel bags tend to disintegrate as one is simply getting another small handful of pretzels. It wouldn’t bother me that pretzels don’t pour. And when I can tell someone is going to do something stupid, I would forgive them ahead of time. Unfortunately, I’m not that forgiving. But I’m working on it.

Peace be with you.