Crabgrass and reciprocity

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I like crabgrass, its green, I can mow it, I can easily pull it out if it should crepe somewhere i don't want it. I honestly don't get why people dislike it so much. I like how it looks, I like how it feels on my feet, ect. I can understand if you want a uniform lawn and you don't like it, but a lot of people I know are absolute zealots when it comes to crabgrass and their lawn. Why? I live with my aunt and she can't even go outside without becoming so overwhelmed with frustration over the fact that I don't mind the stuff that she runs off to pick it while complaining about me. She pulls it out incessantly, and I help sometimes, however, It's just not an issue for me. I don't care if crabgrass grows among our other 6 types of grass. I don't care, and I only pull it up when she asks me to help her. I do plenty of other things around the house, I'm by no means lazy, but when it comes to this, for some reason its a point of extreme tension.

Maybe its a problem with motivation, I don't know, but I just can't force myself to be vigilant over a dislike that I don't share and doesn't make sense to me. I just can't motivate myself to care, and its somewhat of a problem. In a few words, I find it extremely difficult to ( and I don't know if I'm using the word correctly) reciprocate the concerns of others. If one reason is invalid or I don't share the same view, their needs to be another reason or I just won't have any motivation to care. Doing something mindlessly just to please someone else when its over something as subjective and inconsequential as a preference for a favorite color makes me feel like gears are grinding in my head. I wish I was more flexible when it comes to stuff like this, but no matter how hard I try, the grinding never stops. I hate it.

Anyone relate?

Thank you for providing me with the title of my next chapbook.

Yep. Don't remember where I first heard it, but it's FTW:

"Your problems--the name says it all."

I relate. I like weeds. Everybody is nuts. They spend hours and hours building neat gardens, pulling all the edible weeds up, or worse, spraying toxic s**t all over them. They are all mad.

I don't know if the OP is even serious, but I actually relate a little. Sometimes my family worries about keeping up appearances (like with the house and cars.) I do also, but not to the same extent. I don't worry about the minutiae, and it urks them.

I couldn't help seeing what this topic's about.

I agree.
I don't understand how something gets classified as a weed, when something else gets classified as a proper flower or plant or whatever.
Messy lawns are more interesting anyway than the golf-course types people seem to like so much.

Your lawn, your choice.

But I do personally hate crabgrass. I call it "face hugging alien" grass. To me, it looks just like the face hugging aliens in the movie "Alien" so I pull it out whenever I see it. It's not for uniformity of my lawn. There are other non-uniform plants there (I don't mind dandelions). But the reaction I get to crabgrass is so visceral. Every time I look at it I envision that scene in Alien when the Alien grabs somebody's face.

However, I have not found that other crabgrass haters are hating it for the same reason.

I always wanted to see a lawn of pure crabgrass.

Maybe you just need some new terminology--try thnking of it as "face-hugging alien kittens" grass.


I could never understand why my dad hated those "dandy lions" when I thought the yard looked so nice with flowers all over it.

I absolutely hate things like that. For instance, I live with my parents, and I've essentially been drafted into the position of "hey, turn on the light on the stairs." I don't want to turn on the light on the stairs. I don't want it to be light on the stairs, at least not until much later in the night than my folks start turning on lights. It's very frustrating. I wish they'd just leave evening alone.

Just keep quiet about your preferences. People understand laziness better than they understand liking crabgrass. Hide what you like; other people will always be pulling up your crabgrass.

There's a good new term for it! Henceforth, I will use "pulling up your crabgrass" to mean "a kind NT who doesn't get it trying to help you by fixing something you liked how it was."

I thought it was catchy



Exactly, it drives me crazy. We have cats, they eat the grass, I don't want to spray some random chemicals on their food lol



Yeah, Im completely serious xD



My parents use to be the same way about window shades. I liked to have maybe 2 all the way up and 1 all the way down, just for the light it brings into the room, and I liked to look at the sky, but they would always make me keep them all drawn half way xD.



"pulling up your crabgrass", I like it xD

not sure what you are referring to by "crabgrass." What I have heard described as crabgrass has short, thin spines at the edges of the leaves, and hurts if you step on it. people pull it up/spray it partly because they don't like the look of it, but largely so they can walk in the yard barefoot.

I was like that for years - thinking that if somebody else's wishes didn't make sense to me, then they had no right to have such wishes, or that it wasn't up to me to help them. But more recently I've mellowed. I now understand that what somebody wants is what they want, regardless of whether or not it seems logical. So if I care about the person, I'll give them some help in attaining their goals, even if what they want seems absolutely pointless. Fact is, people aren't all that logical.....my own desires don't always make a lot of sense, even to me. Desire does not need to justify itself.