You might be surprised how widespread this comment is. In my experience, it is usually offered by male relatives who have never spent more than a couple of days on a farm themselves. However, I have also heard it hinted at by a lovely friend of mine who was in fact raised on a farm.

The more astute of you may realise that this is in fact a close relative of the phrase "You're being too emotional." Both these phrases leave me completely gobsmacked, and try as I might, I could never come up with a snappy comeback, even long after the event was past. (I am usually good at coming up with the perfect reply which is at once incisive and succinct, with the subtle hint of a put down, after the event. I believe the French call this "l'esprit d'escalier" which means "the wit of the stairway", something you will want to throw yourself down after attempting this for too long. But I digress.)

Ultimately, I think that these phrases are so difficult to make a snappy comeback to because anything you respond after this label has been applied to you only confirms what the insulting person is suggesting. It is much like saying "you are a heretic" - once someone has written you off in this manner, by definition what you say is not worth listening to, and so there is no way for you to reclaim an equal footing.

The best I have come up with as a comeback line, by the way, is: "You meat eaters really need to spend some time at an abbatoir. Or maybe I can read you some things from this book of mine...and then when you are throwing up, I can tell you that you're too emotional!"

It lacks a fair bit, I know.

And it's a bit disingenuous as I have never visited an abbatoir myself (and have no intention of doing so.) Although, I have it on good authority that my Dad, who was the relative I was talking about a couple of paragraphs ago, visited one when he was about 17, and it made him violently ill. So maybe I'll stand by it after all.

Pet peeve no. 2: Useless ISPs

Our current ISP has a policy of booting you off after 3 hours, or after a long period idle. In reality, however, I would be thrilled to actually be connected for a whole 3 hours in a row. What usually happens is:

You dial up.

Service is lightning fast....for about a minute

Service becomes so.....slow.... that the pages you are trying to load time out.

So you curse and try to reconnect. Sometimes, if you are really lucky, the ISP is engaged!!!

Repeat 4 or 5 times.

In this way, an average sort of session, involving checking email and bumming around a bit, often takes 3-4 telephone calls. When you add in the fact that both my sisters are currently on holidays and I am being an unemployed bum, so we use the computer a fair bit, this adds a considerable bit to our telephone bills.

My way of venting? I made this.

Pet Peeve no 3: People who crap on about how young people should live.

The original of this email was sent to me as though it was some kind of motivational message. I think it's really about saying "I am your parent and so I have the power and I write the rules." This was my response (the bits in bold are the original email).

Rules of Life

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it
Maybe you are here to make it fairer. At least you can be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself
But just because you're not a rocket scientist and you don't get it right the first time doesn't mean you're a loser.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
If you can get a job straight out of high school you will be doing well. Do not expect your parents to understand this -- when they were your age, they could apply for 5 jobs and pick the one they wanted.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Work hard and do your best. Anyone who expects more than this has a problem, be they teacher or boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.
Burger flipping was different when your grandparents were your age. These days, the majority of burger flippers work for multinational corporations which have questionable ethics and quite likely do more harm than good to everyone they come into contact with. Sometimes you will have to choose whether you take the money or make the point. You will hate whichever decision you make.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
If you mess up, it is not a personal attack on your parents or a sign that you are retarded. Everyone has to learn from their own mistakes, a fact which people tend to forget after they've done this.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rainforest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Your parents probably aren't that boring now, they just have different interests and opinions to you. This alone can make them interesting, but it will also cause conflict. I mostly agree that you have to sort yourself out before you can go around telling others what to do. However, this is not a license for parents to shove their values onto their kids, or to put crap on their ideas as a way of controlling them.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you the test as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
There are many different paths you can take in life. Being on top of things means you can choose which path you take. But even if you take a couple of wrong turns, you can sometimes still find a backstreet that will take you where you want to go. Most likely, it will take longer, and you will feel like you are going around in circles for a while, and it will take you through unfamiliar territory. You might end up somewhere you never expected to be. But very few of those paths lead to the scrap heap.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
This is why it's great to have a job that you enjoy, because it can be part of you 'finding yourself'. And why most good employers, although they expect people to do their work, recognise that their employees have lives!

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
This is very true. Unless you run the coffee shop.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
If you're really lucky, you could even be one. Yee haaaaa!