…include, in no particular order: winding (as in winding up*, not winding as in punching someone in the stomach), wound (winding completed), wound (hurt), was, wasn’t, wishing, want, wearing, whinging, whining, waiting, worry, who, what, why, when, which, writing, way, worst, will, well, work, wonderful, and (my favourite) weird.
Today, I was wound up by my colleagues. This was not a notable event, except that today I decided (although I didn’t actually make a decision) to whinge about getting wound up. Thus two concepts beginning with W were employed within approximately two minutes. Worry not, gentle readers, the winding-up didn’t constitute anything particularly bad. It was more the knowledge that people enjoy winding me up that made me cross. Perhaps I just felt like whining. Who knows?
Because my default settings are Take Everything Very Seriously and Think The Worst, being wound up often makes me feel stupid, and makes me think that everyone else thinks I’m stupid as well. Today at work I gave myself extra stupid points because I reacted by whinging about being wound up. I then got even more wound up than I had been by the original joke, which, I fear, was even more amusing for my colleagues! Wonderful. Ein Teufelskreis. Kind of.
I am extremely easy to wind up. I always have been. Not only am I gullible, but I’m also ridiculously sensitive and quite neurotic. If I can possibly take it personally, I will. Almost everyone I know has deliberately wound me up at some point, because it’s funny. I realise that winding people up is funny, because, believe it or not, I do actually have a sense of humour somewhere, and I might even wind people up myself sometimes. (Shock! Horror!). Yes, I realise I’m a hypocrite.
Sometimes (a lot of times) I have serious sense of humour failure. My family and friends despair that I don’t find any TV comedy funny, that I don’t laugh at their jokes and that I take offence (sometimes on behalf of other people) at anything it’s remotely possible to take offence at. Tonight, for example, Mr C related an account of how his colleagues had been joking with him. He found it highly amusing, but I thought what they said was really offensive and wanted to ring them up and shout at them!
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Although this post may seem to have come to rather an abrupt end, I think that is enough. Since I started writing this (before dinner), I have calmed down a lot, thanks to the cathartic nature of writing, Mariah Carey and me singing ‘All I Want for Christmas’, and Mr C laughing at me. Therefore, much of what I planned to say will not be said. Probably just as well.
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I’m not sure if non-British readers will be familiar with the phrase ‘winding up’. It basically means to deliberately do something you know will annoy somone, for the sake of amusement.
