Those People

There are moments, and I believe “epiphany” would be too strong of a word to describe these moments, when you truly understand an aspect of someone for the first time.  I’m not talking about a really dramatic moment of comprehension, more of a mundane revelation—a comment or action that makes you mentally say to your friend, “Oh.  You’re one of those people.” 

Like, maybe you’re in a library, and you see your friend walk through the door, so you wave sociably at her, and she grins, happy to see you, and walks over to you and your books.

Then begins talking.  Loudly.  (Or at least loudly for a library, where the “no talking” rule is so well-known that every caricature of a librarian seems to take the form of a cross-looking woman wearing thick glasses and shushing someone.)

Your friend is one of those people.

Now, even though we don’t terminate relationships over moments like these, because, really, they’re just puzzle pieces falling into place…

OK, to be real with you, I’ve totally terminated relationships over moments like these.  Jerks talking in a library?  Someone not tipping a waiter or waitress?  People using the wrong “your/you’re?” 

Unfriended.

(I’m exaggerating a little, but, really folks, tip your servers)

However, it’s the holiday season, and the end of an old year, so I’m proposing we be more accepting, because I have to admit, there has been many a time when I have committed certain cardinal sins for which I would condemn others.

Faux-Philosophical Dialogue at Inappropriate Venues

The cliché here would be college students at a bar, throwing around big words and metaphysical arguments, trying to impress each other and all of those within hearing distance.  People find this behavior irritating because 1) a person does not generally go to a bar to listen to an egotistical remix of Ethics 101.  And 2) These people are usually incorrect in ways that would make you look like a douchebag for contesting, so you have to sit there and let these people think they are intellectually superior to all. 

I don’t even know why I continue to despise this behavior so much, because I am a repeat offender of over-sharing Things No One Cares About.  Recently, I was out drinking with my friends, and, for the first hour we were out, right when I was about to finish my drink, I would find it refilled.  I thrilled everyone at the table by announcing, “There was this guy in Greek mythology, Sisyphus, who is supposed to be cursed to roll this stone up a hill for eternity, and every time he gets to the top, the stone rolls back down and he has to start again.  That’s sort of what I feel like, because my drink keeps filling up right before I finish it.  I am the Sisyphus of beer.”  Yes, the story tells just as well in print as it did in person.  Even though I was trying to impress no one (the metaphor just seemed really apt, and sharing it seemed very important), I was immediately struck by what an asshole I sounded like.  I was not even inebriated enough to, as what could be our generation’s anthem suggests we do in times of trouble, blame it on the alcohol. 

People Who Burst into Song, Unprompted

I do feel that Glee and general narcissism are largely to blame for this phenomenon.  I was in the cafeteria a couple weeks ago, waiting in line and trying to have a conversation with my sister, when this girl behind me started singing an off-key rendition of “Silent Night.” 

I glanced at Jess, “Well, it was,” I muttered.

It is a testament to how irritating this girl’s performance was that Jess did not tell me to be quiet. 

I don’t know what about the prospective meal of Salisbury steak and corn dogs prompted this girl to truly bellow out this particular Christmas carol, but, by God, I hope she did some sort of vocal warm-ups before dinner, because she was going for a golden ticket to Hollywood at the end of her performance.  The weirdest aspect of this was possibly that her friends (or the people I assume were her friends—though I would want my friends to physically restrain me if they heard me venture the beginning bars of any song in public) simply ignored her, as though this was a completely normal occurrence. 

But….OK, have you ever heard the song “Lipgloss” by Lil Mama, because, God help me, I have.  When my friend first told me about this song, I accused her of making it up.  When she indignantly showed me the music video, I told her just because she could rally up some people and produce a low-budget music video to a song about a cheap cosmetic product did not make her song legitimate.  Eventually I came around, though, and now whenever someone puts lipgloss on or even says the word lipgloss, I automatically “sing,” “My lipgloss be cool, my lipgloss be poppin’.”  It is as mortifying as you’d think to have this response to lipgloss, especially since I feel the song is, unsurprisingly, not extraordinarily memorable, so people generally think I’m just writing my own rap music.

People Who Think Their Thoughts and Experiences are Just That Interesting

Modern technology has led us to post our thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, or, if you’re really ambitious, a blog.  As a writer, I enjoy many aspects of technological communication, and as a fairly lazy person, I love the ease of staying in touch with my friends and knowing what’s going on with them without actually having to get off my ass. 

I just wish some people would be more entertaining.  Otherwise, I may actually have to get up and find a remote to turn on the television.

Some people have the most lackluster statuses.  “Just woke up.  Sitting on the couch, watching tv.”  “Did some laundry.  Will probably do more laundry later.  Will eventually have done all the laundry.” I’m not faulting these people for having boring lives, because, really, I spend 90% of my time reading and writing, but do you think the world is quite that interested in the going-ons of your life when you’re as close to doing nothing as a living human being can be without actually ceasing to exist?  Just wait for something neat to happen to you or post some song lyrics.

It gets bad, though, when people are the first and only to comment on their own statuses.  A new level of hubris has been reached.  If you’re not correcting some typo, wait for someone to care enough to comment and then respond accordingly.  The worst thing about this behavior is that I always mentally imagine this person congratulating himself/herself on such pithy, inspiring posts, or imagining the hundreds, nay, thousands of people sitting on the edge of their seats for a new update.  How irritating.

And yet, a year or so ago, I went to a David Sedaris reading.  As my friend and I were standing in line to get our books signed, we found ourselves consistently bowled over by eager, stronger readers who wanted their books signed first.  Suddenly a woman all but clothes-lined the approaching swarm of would-be line jumpers, and pulled my friend and me in front of her. 
“I hate when people do that,” she said, glaring at the teenagers behind us, and then smiling warmly and introducing herself. 

“Usually I’m much more patient,” she continued, apologetically “but I just quit my job from home and now I’m working in a corporate-setting.  The atmosphere is really frying my nerves.” 

I was genuinely interested in this woman. She looked about my mother’s age, had streaks of blue and pink in her hair, a nose-ring, and just had an air of intrigue about her. 

“What did you do from home?”  I asked, picturing something very bohemian that would lead to more conversation.

“I was a phone-sex operator,” she said.

I studiously ignored my friend, who I knew would have turned a bright shade of red and been unable to respond.  If I looked at her or caught her eye, I would not be responsible for whatever reaction I had.  And, right then, I had to keep up the verbal volley.

“Oh.  How nice.  And…why the switch to corporate?”

As the conversation went on, and the woman’s boyfriend encouraged her to share particular conversations and fetishes (there was one particular story about a Nightcrawler fetish I won’t delve into), I just kept thinking, “This would make a fantastic blog entry.  I wish I could sneakily update my Facebook status and non-creepily mention a phone-sex operator in a Facebook status, because this encounter has an air of unexpected majesty to it.”  

I couldn’t help but be a little self-important, but even as these thoughts intruded, there was an undertone of, “Wow, I think I’m a very important person, don’t I?” 

And so, I invite everyone to just take a few minutes and reflect on how often we fall short of our own standards.  Don’t even lower your standards, but perhaps cut those who don’t quite reach them some slack.  Recognize the people we can’t stand, the people we judge, the people we sometimes are.

Happy holidays and happy reading.

All is Fair in Group Work and War

I am a pacifist.  I believe that violence begets violence, and that people who resort to physical altercations when angry are giving in to unhelpful barbaric urges, which will ultimately benefit no one.  No one who knows me will ever tell you that I’m a doormat, but I feel with all of my being that violence is neither an acceptable nor a permanent solution to any problem.

These convictions were how I knew I was being irrational when I considered killing my group-mates for my final project in my online class.

The class covered WWII, so, I reasoned angrily, there were bound to be some causalities.  However, the annoying “What Would Ghandi And/Or Jesus Do” mantra that stays resolutely in my mind gave me pause.  I simply could not physically harm my group-mates.  Ghandi and Jesus would both be very sad.  Anyway, this was an online class, and a few of my teammates lived off campus, so acting out on my anger would require far more research than I was really interested in undertaking. 

The assignment was to take part in a War Game, where each group took a different stance on several questions, and the professor picked which team answered the questions most efficiently.  There were war terms and whatever to make it all seem more war-like, but that’s basically the gist of it.  Our professor named generals to each team, and as The Hand of Academic Fate would have it, I was general of our rag-tag team.  This, I strongly suspected, was because I was one of three people who answered our weekly assignments in the forums using complete sentences, and whose responses were consistently text-speak free.  My natural leadership abilities most likely did not come into play, but that does not mean I did not take my position seriously.

Allow me to confess that, when it comes to group work, or, basically in any area of my life, I tend to be a little controlling.  If someone else is named “group leader” or “general” or “emperor” or whatever ruling entity the professor seems fit to dub the poor sap in charge of the group, I give this person about two minutes of my sincere loyalty.  I feel this person out to make sure he or she will not tarnish my GPA with a lack of paranoia.  Usually, this person is found wanting, and I take over.  Not officially or anything.  I don’t tell this person, “I’m sorry, you seem nice, but I really don’t trust you with this very important assignment.  I’ll be usurping your position.”  That would be rude.  I simply assert my authority by offering to aid the group leader with certain tasks, like, for example, the entire assignment.  We pretend the other person is still in charge, but we all know I have truly taken over.

Before you judge me, I wasn’t born this way.  I’ve been hurt before.  The harsh world of collaborative academia has jaded me, because, frankly, some people just do not care as much as I do, and I have gone through many a sleepless night redoing work for people who are OK with receiving a C on an assignment.  But, in the land of the Less Than Completely Sane, we say why settle for a C when it is possible to receive an A?  And, anyway, I had eventually learned that there are two options to group work: You can maintain an air of pleasantness and do all of the work yourself, or you can unleash and force equality on everyone.  I had never taken the second route before, and was anxious to see what awaited me beyond this new bend in the road.

Many of you have, I’m sure, suffered as I have.  But if you have not tried to complete a group assignment in an online class, (and here I must ask your forgiveness for the always-irritating move of placing my suffering in a higher category than another’s) you know nothing of pain.  People let you down in class?  The next day, come in and faux-pleasantly remind them that they need to get their shit together.  Someone flakes on an assignment?  You at least have the opportunity for the cathartic release that glaring can provide, or, if you’re less dignified, you can toss spitballs at them after your presentation.  In an online class, none of this can happen.  You’re stuck emailing people to remind them that they still have not completed their share of the work.  And a lot of grievance can get lost in cyberspace. 

But, oh, I was not above emails. 

As I said, I’m jaded, and as you’ve probably gathered, I’m sort of, perhaps an eensy bit too serious about school work.  However, after the first week passed and I had received no emails from my team, I sent a long, didactic group email to my fellow warriors.  The subject line was not THIS IS SPARTAAAA! but the spirit was there nonetheless.

The email was, as I already mentioned, long, so I will just recount its gist: I informed my team that, while I had finished the assignment on my own this time, it would not happen again, and, as their general (yup, I pulled the group leader card.  And also sort of acted like my position as a ranking officer was legitimate), I was not above telling the professor who was not participating.  Also, I hoped they had a nice day and were enjoying the end of the semester.

I proudly told my sister about this email, and she regarded me warily. 

“What?” I said, seeing her look.  “That was a very professional email...Except for the part when I essentially threatened to tell on them if they didn’t do what I said,” I added as an afterthought. 

My sister considered her words carefully.  She knew how I was about my war games.  “Do you think any of them will be asking to hang out after class is over?”

I rolled my eyes.  “I’m not here to make friends.”  I briefly wondered when my life turned into an episode of Survivor or America’s Next Top Model. 

“Well, then, that’s a great email to send.”

And with that I decided my sister just did not understand.  This was war, and I had to win.  (Along with my other captivating qualities, I’m sort of competitive.)  I eventually rallied the troops, although after exchanging a few vaguely and then not-so-vaguely threatening emails with a group member I never heard from (Deserting, I informed him in one of my many unanswered messages, was not an option in this army), I began to sincerely fear mutiny. 

“I really hope none of them, like, see my student profile picture and then recognize me on campus,” I told my sister one day, as I checked to make sure everyone had posted their parts of the assignment.  “Frankly, I’m not sure what they would do.”  Something told me that thanking me for their passing grade would be the least likely possibility. 

She was about to answer when I saw an email from my professor, declaring my group the winner of the war game. 

“YES!” I held my laptop over my head in victory.  “We’ve defeated the Axis Powers!!”  I leapt from my chair and attempted a victory lap around our dorm room, but, as the room was small and cluttered, what resulted was more of a victory shuffle. 

My sister rolled her eyes.  “Congratulations,” she said dryly. “Are you going to email your group and see if they want to get together and celebrate?”

“Those deadweights?  Please.  I am going to email them and say congratulations, because that, my dear, is what good generals do: We rise above turmoil, and then pretend others are just as deserving of credit as we are.”

I sent the aforementioned email, but, to my great surprise, received no replies or friend requests on Facebook from my fellow soldiers.  However, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

How to Make Friends and Influence People (or, you know, not)

Because I am probably not a real college student, I spent my spring break in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at a Writing Center Conference.  Florida was just too much of a warm, sunny cliche that time of year for me, and so I fled to a place that was not only still freezing, but sounded like it was a location in a Dr. Seuss book. 

Yup, somehow even with a brain in my head and feet in my shoes, I ended up in Kalamazoo, riding in the back of some woman's SUV as two huge water jugs leaked onto the seat my friend and I were hovering over.  Our boss had lost the keys to our rental car, and this woman (hell, let's call her Tracy so we don't get too pronoun crazy through this riveting tale) offered to give us a ride back to our hotel.  My boss had remained silent the entire ride, except to give some tentative directions to Tracy, who happily talked on about the history of Kalamazoo.  Now, Tracy seemed like a very nice person, and I'm not just saying that because she did not leave us stranded at the conference with only weak coffee and “I Love Writing” pins to sustain us for the night.  But she was one of those really perky people, who, hilariously enough, sounded as though she had just inhaled helium, and she remained oblivious to the strained silence in the car.  Despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, I found myself enjoying the ride in a "what the hell" sort of way.  However, the bright city lights soon faded into a foggy field, perfect for, well, hiding bodies.  

"Wow, it's pretty creepy out here," Tracy chirped over her Christian rock music.  "It looks like an episode of the Twilight  Zone.  This would be a horrible place to get lost, but a good place to murder someone; no one would ever find you!" Tracy concluded cheerfully.  My pleasantly neutral expression morphed into an alarmed glance that I shared with my coworker, trying to ask with my eyes if she was willing to do a Charlie’s Angels roll out of the car to survive.  Because if she wasn’t, hell, there was more of a chance for me to escape.  Tracy realized her slight faux pas.  "Oh my goodness, why would I say that?  You don't know me.  That's an awful thing to say..." 

At Tracy's "You don't know me" realization, I felt a rush of affectionate camaraderie, because I frequently assume familiarity where there is only ignorance and, after my inevitable outburst, fear.  

My biggest problem comes when I forget people often need eased into acceptance of my sense of humor.  I'm somewhat of an acquired taste, but I don't always remember that about myself, preferring to instead imagine people instantly appreciate my brilliance and charm.  Sometimes I will, for example, joke about my alleged brilliance and charm in front of strangers, who will not know that I’m being hyperbolic for comedic effect. 

At times, though, people not fully understanding when I’m joking has aided me greatly.  For example, the other night, I was celebrating my friend’s 21^st birthday at the Tiki Lounge. 

For anyone looking for a recommendation concerning clubs in Pittsburgh, if you’re feeling tolerant and not at all claustrophobic, the Tiki Lounge is fine in small doses.  However, it is the sort of place that, upon leaving, may inspire comments such as “I feel like I need to shower.  With bleach,” and so on.

But, I digress.

I was dancing with a guy for a few songs, when he leaned next to my ear and yelled over the music, “Why didn’t your boyfriend come along?”

I rolled my eyes at him both for the transparent line (no, my boyfriend will not materialize and kick your ass for putting your hands on me), and also for bothering to start conversation at all when the music was so loud.  We both had to shout to be heard, and the fact that the strain on my vocal cords reminded me vaguely of talking to my grandmother was causing this person’s sex appeal to rapidly diminish.

  “I’m single,” I responded.    

He backed up from me, put his hands on his hips, and looked me over slowly, grinning.  I narrowed my eyes and tried not to feel like a piece of steak he was considering purchasing.  “Why in the world are you single?” he asked, coming in closer again. 

I took a miniscule step back and answered, “Hunchback.”

He blinked at me.  “Huh?”

I gestured vaguely behind my shoulders.  “Hunchback. You know, Victor Hugo’s novel, or the admittedly more famous Disney movie…?”

He regarded me for a second.  “Oh,” he said, realization lighting his features.  “You’re joking.”

I stared at him and said nothing.  His face went from cautiously relieved to a little creeped out.  Even though he could visually ascertain I had no hunchback, and probably did not escape from the bell tower for the night, he was likely wondering how many shades of crazy I had been painted before I entered the club. 

I’m not sure if that technique would have worked as an escape maneuver (meh. Probably.), because my sister gallantly pulled me away from Prince Charming to dance with her.  Regardless of the outcome, I enjoyed myself more in the two minutes of forcing my sense of humor on a stranger than I did in the ten minutes of actually dancing with said stranger.

You see, that’s the secret to it all—no one needs to think you’re funny except for you.  It’s like when I went hiking with my friends the other week, and one of them asked what path we should take.  I responded, “Take the road less traveled!  That will make all the difference,” and then I chuckled gleefully while they all ignored me and looked at the map.  Maybe by now your friends, like mine, know that your literature classes have forever tainted you and made you incapable of real social interaction (so they make you hike through the woods away from where anyone else can hear your Frost allusions.  Yet, never fear, if you’re really cool, you’ll have a blog to tell everyone about the references anyway), but that doesn’t matter as long as you think you’re funny.  And as long as you don’t scare away too many strangers in the meantime.  

I'll Write You a Love Song, Sara Bareilles

There are two types of revelations.  First, you have the illusion-shattering, orbit-reconfigurating, gasp-rendering revelation.  And then you have the "...and?" revelation, which everyone already knew, but someone nonetheless felt the need to make a big deal out of sharing.

The revelation of this post falls under the latter category.
 I'm somewhat of a geek.

It's true.  I enjoy reading and talking about what I've read.  I love going to class and carrying on class discussion outside of the classroom.  I had a superhero obsession when I was little (I was Batman for Halloween, like, five times) that I never quite outgrew.  Often a follower of underrated shows, I can answer any Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, or Veronica Mars question someone would ask.  Or, more accurately, I spend a lot of time wishing someone would ask such a question so that I could bond with a fellow fan in a scarcely populated fandom.  And, yes, I employ the term "fandom" naturally.  Geek.

But I often do not fully embrace my geekiness.  Sometimes I go so far as to pretend I am not geeky, but that takes so much acting effort, I usually just hope my geekiness is subdued enough to be inoffensive.  This aspiration to keep my inner geek meek led me to hold off on writing this blog entry until almost a full week after the discussed event occurred.  OK, I had papers and, you know, a life, and everything to contend with, as well, but mostly I was too excited to not just have this be the entirety of my blog entry:

I LOVE SARA BAREILLES AND SAW HER IN CONCERT OMGGGGGG SHE WAS SO GREAT AND FUNNY AND TALENTED AND NOW I HAVE A CONCERT SHIRT AND AM SINGING HER SONGS OFTEN AND LOUDLY!!!!!!!!!  :D

But, as Wordsworth would say, "Poetry is emotion recalled in tranquility," and you know I work hard to make this blog as poetic as possible (-ignores scoff from reader-), so, again, I had to wait.  Since I waited so long to talk about this, however, I am going full disclosure, here.  I will not shield you from my fangirl moments.  We'll begin at the beginning, because who am I to challenge the system?

A little over a month ago, my roommate told me that Sara Bareilles was going to be playing in Pittsburgh, and I handled the news with all the grace of Bambi's handicapped cousin, Gimpy, the three-legged deer, on ice.

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!  Do you want to go? Who else would want to go?  Ah! Do they still have tickets?"  And then I turned around and ran up to my room to order the tickets.  In my excitement, I accidentally bought four tickets instead of the intended three.  I'm blaming my unusually giddy emotions instead of my inability to add, because I have counted to three successfully before.  I swear.  Once I officially purchased the tickets, I jumped up and down for a few minutes.  I did not celebrate that much when I received my college acceptance letter (probably because part of me is still bitter about not getting that letter from Hogwarts).

I will fast-forward through the months leading up to the concert, because they're predictable, and everyone who has ever waited to go to a concert of a band they love will probably relate to the musical limbo.  You're very careful not to "over-listen" to the artist's music, because you don't want to get tired of your favorite songs, but you feel a little disloyal for abandoning an afore much-visted section of your playlist.  Sometimes, days will go by when you forget you are eventually going to a concert, but then you'll suddenly remember and become excited again.  So you're basically close to mental instability, because of the denial of everyday pleasures, guilt, memory lapses, and sporadic mood swings.

The day of the concert, I had to force myself to admit that the "Will Sara like me" question was contributing to my anxiety level, and then I had to gently remind myself that I would not actually be meeting Sara Bareilles.  I was slightly disappointed. Although, I did spend some time joking with my friends about the probability of me lying on her piano as she performed.

Sara (we're on a first-name basis now) was very funny, which won me over immediately.  She mentioned how great the crowd was several times, stressing, "No, seriously, you are all fantastic.  Did they screen you before they let you in? Are there, like, four jackasses standing outside with their tickets, like, 'Man, they said this concert was supposed to be awesome. This sucks.'"

Along with her own original songs, she covered "Fuck You," "Little Lion Man," and "Yellow," and all of her covers were great.  When she started to sing "Little Lion Man," I screamed my approval, but was apparently standing in the section of people who did not love Mumford and Sons, and so I got a couple wary looks.  "I love this song," I said, defensively to anyone who may have brought their super-hearing to the concert.

"I love this song" was my refrain to my poor roommate.  Every song that they started to play would lead to me leaning over and saying, "I love this song," and my roommate would nod and smile.  God bless her, because if our positions were reversed, I may have made her switch seats or take a sedative.  It was after approximately the third song when I realized my excitement level was about 17 notches above everyone else's.  I did not attempt to tone it down, though, because a concert is the ideal place to know music you already love on a different level and also express your appreciation for the songs that have been with you through a myriad of moments in your life.  Anyone who has belted out "King of Anything" after a trying conversation with a know-it-all, mournfully sung "Hold My Heart" while driving through a dreary night, or reaffirmed their independence with "Love Song," can understand a fan's desire to vigorously applaud Sara Bareilles's performance.

In short, totally worth the $25 and the shreds of the cover under which my geekiness once hid.

*Blog Extra*

On the way to the concert, for reasons that are both too complicated and too strange to recall here, my friend and I texted back and forth about Sara Bareilles songs that would be fun for a....ahem, funeral playlist.

"The Light" --There's a line about following someone into the light that my friend found appropriate.
"Breathe Again" --You get it.
"Hold My Heart" --If the person was an organ-donor
"Come Round Soon" --Merely for irony's sake
--I would have warned you about inappropriate humor, but I think if that sort of thing bothered you, you wouldn't be reading my blog in the first place.

A Bucketlist Turned Upside Down

It was sometime around the middle of January that I started compiling this list.  For those of you who do not know a lot about SHU (and here I assume that I'm addressing a vast majority of you), we have a very long Christmas break.  We're off for about six weeks.  And, yes, six weeks away from school is a large amount of time and very welcome by the end of the first semester, but there comes a point, generally around the middle of January, when you realize you can no longer pretend you're spending hours in front of the television to rejuvenate from the fall semester.  Your batteries have long ago recharged and now you're just being sort of shameless in your sloth.  It's sad, but not the kind of sadness that motivates one to change.  More accurately the kind of sadness that motivates one to sigh forlornly and eat a leftover Christmas cookie.  You know, that really specific kind of sadness.
Anyway, I was telling you about this list.
Well, because of the t.v.'s strong gravitational pull during the middle of January, I saw a lot of advertisements for the medical drama Off the Map.  If anyone is unfamiliar with the premise of this show, because you didn't spend two months living on your couch, all you really need to know for the purposes of this post is that good-looking doctors (are there any other kind on television?) are working in this jungle-esque place.  In the most common commercial for the show, one of the doctors spontaneously leaps off a cliff and into the ocean.  This moment began my list.

Things I Will Never Do, No Matter What, Even Though I Saw Them Happen on TV
1) Spontaneously Cliff-Dive
Maybe I watched too many of those "we videotaped this gruesome accident" shows with my grandfather when I was young.  Maybe I've just never experienced a moment of euphoria so intense that I've felt compelled to leap from a great height.  Maybe I just enjoy being able to move all of my limbs too much.  But my first thought when I see television characters whooping with joy and flinging themselves from cliffs into a body of water beneath is always, "How do they know how deep that water is?"  For real though, the water is lapping against the jagged rocks beneath these people, and they're just thinking "yay."  How do they know that water isn't, like, two inches deep?  Would I ever cliff-dive?  Perhaps.  If someone measured the depth of the water, tested the wind resistance, and then, you know, went first.
2) Be the "Don't Worry, I'll Hold Them Off" Person
In chase scenes, especially if it's a small group of people running from another group of assailants, there pops up, in the moment where the window of hope is slowly closing, a person who volunteers to stay behind and fight off the attackers to buy his or her friends some more time to escape.  Um, no thank-you.  Like, that's all brave and whatever, but in these situations, if that person isn't badly outnumbered, then the would-be hero is insurmountably out-powered, and the attackers are held off for, like, a second longer.  Usually this selfless person isn't even a primary character, and quite often this person is offering this sacrifice as an act of redemption for sucking for the entire movie.  Dude, if I can't even be featured favorably in the movie, I am not going to undergo this painful death to buy the protagonist some time to run off, get trapped somewhere, and end up facing the antagonist at the end anyway.  I'd rather serve out my redemption in my long life by stopping completely at stop signs from now on, or actually smiling at people I vaguely know and pass in the halls instead of pretending to text as they walk by.
3) Abruptly End Phone Conversations
It's an odd staple of television that when phone conversations take place in order to provide some sort of exposition or reveal a long-kept secret, people just hang up without actually saying goodbye.  I don't understand this break from reality, and it bothers me, because I would be calling someone back if I was all, "I've unlocked the secret code! You must listen to the green rooster crow at midnight and then burn the bridge to the island of the harvest moon!"  and the person on the other end was like, "Ah, I thought so." Click.  Would an "OK, thank-you.  Talk to you later" really take that much more time?  Usually the person that is hung up on has just done a considerable amount of work or uncovered some really stressful piece of information, so that makes the dropped call theme even more annoying.
4) Be the Person Who Sees Where that Noise is Coming From
This one pretty much speaks for itself.  We've all seen horror movies where someone cheerfully jumps up and volunteers to investigate some strange noise, likely thinking some variance of, "'Tis the wind and nothing more," but being, always, hopelessly, obviously, fatally wrong.  We can play nose goes to figure out who has to be the detective of the day.
5) Assume Villain is Dead
Ever watched Zombieland where we're encouraged to "double-tap," or, rather, shoot the bad guy more than once?  Agreed.  I don't even know why you wouldn't.
6) Give Cryptic Answers to Straightforward Questions
This doesn't really bother me, because only in fiction can people be so vague and metaphorical without having the person talking to them just give up and walk away, but I just know I'd never do it.  "Where are you heading?"  "Away from here."  (Often said while looking moodily out a window)  Dude, the person does not truly care where you're going.  He or she was just trying to be polite.  Stop making people work so hard to talk to you.
7) Be Stoic about a Life-Threatening Injury
It's not just the "No, no, I'm fine" response to being shot or stabbed that baffles me, but also the not saying anything about the injury or ailment.  People on television will be hurt and not say a word so they don't distract their team from whatever mission they're on.  Or, they'll find out they have some debilitating disease and keep it a secret so no one feels sorry for them.  If someone shot a gun around me, I'd constantly be like, "You remember the one time I almost got shot?"  or if I found out I had an illness that could possibly, one day affect my sight, every day I'd be like, "Well, since I'm going to go blind soon....le sigh."  And most people I know would be the same, so I don't really get why television wants us to think people are selfless.  We're not buying it, t.v.
8) Not Lock the Door when Partaking in R-Rated Activities
No one locks doors on t.v.  In fact, privacy in general does not seem to matter often.  Cheating on a wife?  Oh, don't bother with the deadbolt.  Selling drugs?  Let's exchange goods by the open window.  I'm so paranoid when I'm doing anything even mildly less than acceptable that I cannot imagine not being the most annoying, neurotic "OK, but do you know for sure that the walls are soundproof?" type of villain in the world.

Surely the list could continue, but in the interest of your time, and, frankly, interest, I'll just end by asking if there's anything you frequently see on television, but would never, ever attempt.  As always, happy reading.