1. I’m going to misplace everything.  I already do this, so it’ll just be magnified twelvethousandfold.  I misplace my phone about 5 times a day.  I put papers on my desk and can’t find them for 40 minutes.  And they’re right there, on my desk.  It’s exhausting.  My grandmother recently drove an hour and a half away to get her hair done at a salon by her old house, and while she was there she went to lunch.  She somehow managed to lose her car key between parking, walking into the restaurant, eating and leaving.  She thought it must be buried under the umbrellas, shopping bags, papers, and multiple packages of cookies she has strewn around her car, so she made my mom call a locksmith (who totally swindled her and made her pay 175.00 in cash).  After all that, the key wasn’t even in her car.  My mom had to make the 4 hour trip to bring her a spare.  This is the kind of shit you’ll be dealing with in the future, Baby Grouch.

2. I’m not going to be able to hear anything.  I already can’t hear.  I once went in to have my hearing tested because I realized I was making my students repeat themselves and kept telling them they needed to just TALK LOUDER.  It turns out my eardrums work just fine, but I’m allergic to my cat.  So allergic, in fact, that my Eustachian tubes are perpetually stuck together.  Allergen earmuffs, if you will.  What? Did you ask me why I didn’t get rid of my cat? I think we’ll both be better off if I pretend I didn’t hear you say that.

3.  I’m going to poke my loved ones in the eyeballs with my whiskers.  Seriously, I’m the hairiest beast.  You  might think I’m exaggerating, but have you seen my 7th grade picture?  I can only hope that they won’t get so long that I poke myself in my own orbs.  Which brings me to number 4.

4.   I’m going to be blind.  This is going to be a horrible condition in itself, but will be doubly horrible when considering the implications when combined with number 3.  How will I see the hairs that need to be plucked?  I’m already very much near-sighted.  Combine this with impending farsightedness and that means I’ll be nosighted.  Blindness is scary. Almost as scary as not seeing my own hirsuteness is not being able to see if bears are surrounding my tent when I go camping.  Even if I don’t actually go camping, the thought of potentially being in the woods and not being able to spot a bear before it sneaks up on me and swipes my guts out with his claws, gives me anxiety.  My impending nosightedness is not going to improve my neuroses.

5.  I’m going to walk into a room and ask, “What did I come in here for?”  This will happen in every room I enter. Probably even the bathroom.  I will go into a room to complete task A and not be able to remember what task A was until I walk out of the room to do task B.  At this point, I will complete task A, and then completely forget what the hell task B was.  And the cycle continues.  And, I will probably end up peeing myself.

6.   I’m going to list every item I have in the fridge and pantry when guests come for a visit. My grandmother does this and it is annoying as fuck.  Seriously, stop telling me about the 6 different types of mustard that you have in the fridge.   Mustard is delicious, yes, but also so not important. In fact, it is so unimportant that I will choke on a dry pretzel before encouraging you by responding to your nonsensical mustard-speak.  The incessant babble about mustard is making me hate my used-to-be-favorite condiment.  I caught myself Granny Listing the other day to my sister’s fiance.  I basically forced leftover pumpkin pie into his hand and was wasting time chatting about condiments, for crissakes.  We hardly get to talk and I wasted time on CONDIMENTS.  I’m pissing myself off thinking about it right now.  I caught myself after I had offered up half my fridge and then promptly rescinded all of my offers and wouldn’t let him try my strawberry ghostpepper jam (which is REALLY, REALLY good).

7.  I’m going to get annoyed with technology.  I like to think I’m okay with technology now.  I’m one of the ones in our department where I work who is considered somewhat technology savvy.  But, if I’m trying to do something and I don’t know how, I really just want someone to do it for me.  I usually need it done NOW and don’t have time for bullshit – like LEARNING.  I get annoyed when I can’t do something, but I get even more annoyed when someone points out the obvious, like the fact that I should take the time to figure it out.  I still haven’t used Tweet Grid.  Or Prezi.  Or Camtasia.  Let’s face it, I’m not so hot at Instagram.  I think there are a million apps that people use all the time I haven’t even heard of yet.

8.  I’m not going to be able to sleep.  Hopefully I can still blog about it and find others who can relate and help me vent or find the humor in the situation.  Then it’ll just annoy those who hate hearing about my stupid blog.

9.  I’m going to gross you out with my cough. It’s already harsh and recurrent.  I drink water – I cough.  I talk – I cough.  I breathe – I cough.  I sleep – I wake myself up with my cough.  I choke on my own saliva – I cough and cough and cough and tears stream down my face and I cannot get one word out and I cough some more.  Baby Grouch was doing this weird fake-coughing for awhile and I couldn’t figure out why.  As I was changing her one day and turned my head to cough, it dawned on me.  She was COPYING me.  At 6 months old Baby Grouch was already a saucy little Coughy Cat.  So gross.  My grandmother gets a cough every time she eats.  One bite and it’s all cough cough cough cough… and she gets an amazed look on her face and says, “Oh! I’ve got a tickle in my throat!” She always acts surprised, like the same thing didn’t happen at breakfast and lunch and dinner for the past 20 years.

How are YOU going to annoy your friends and family when you get older?