It’s that time again-TOP 3 THURSDAY!! This week: pet peeves. This is where all of my little quirks are going to come out, in no particular order, so please continue to be my friend after this if we are already friends, and if we aren’t…don’t judge my too harshly!

1. ALPHABETICAL ORDER. I absolutely hate it when my things are out of order. All of my CDs and movies HAVE to be in alphabetical order…and I can’t emphasize the “have to” part enough; I’m not kidding, even a little bit. My movies are all in alphabetical order by movie name, and then if there are a bunch of movies in a series, such as my Harry Potter movies and my Twilight movies, they are in order of the series within their alphabetical place (“Twilight” and “New Moon” are together because they are part of a series). I also can’t stand it when one of my movies is missing from my collection for a long time; I lent a friend my copy of “The Hangover” in January, and just got it back this past Saturday night…that’s a space of 3 months…it’s designated space between “Grease” and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” mocked me with it’s absence every time I looked at my DVD collection. Also, my CDs are all in alphabetical order by performer or group, and the mixed CDs that I still have from when that was the cool thing to do are grouped by the type of music on the CD, THEN alphabetically. My books are also in alphabetical order by author, and in order of release (i.e. the Dan Brown books, although the three books featuring Robert Langdon are in order of their “series”) or the series order (again, the Harry Potter or Twilight books) within the author classification. But you might wonder: what about individual books that have common subjects, but do not share the same author and aren’t in a series? Those books are simply grouped by subject. For instance, the tennis books that I have ( Breaking Back by James Blake, Open by Andre Agassi, and Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played are all together on my bookshelf. This system might seem a little excessive, but I know exactly where my CDs/books/movies are at all times, and whether or not something is missing. Do you??

2. PEOPLE READING OVER MY SHOULDER. I HATE it when people do this. And this mostly applies to random people who come up behind me to read over my shoulder, not when I’m pointing something out to someone else. Please don’t do this-end of story.

3. SPORTS TEAM FANS. This is a bit of a soapbox pet peeve of mine. I am all for people being fans of sports teams…it’s entirely healthy to believe in something bigger than you, that you have absolutely no control over. I do NOT believe, however, that it is okay for you to take that loyalty too far. Let’s take, for instance, Crimson Tide fans. I did my undergraduate work at The University of Alabama, and became a Tide fan because I went to school there. I grew up in Ohio, where you were either a Michigan fan or a fan of THE Ohio State (the ALL CAPS is to indicate sarcasm, FYI), and let’s face it: in Centerville, where I grew up, you cheered for the Buckeyes…I was not really a fan of either-though I was very excited for OSU to win the National Championship against Miami in 2003. Anyway, my point is: I am a Crimson Tide fan, and I prefer that the Buckeyes win, but I do not heckle Tennessee fans, or Florida fans, or Michigan fans, etc. And it’s equally as ridiculous for those fans to heckle me-nothing wrong with friendly trash-talking, but there’s no reason for heckling, or thinking I’m stupid because I cheer for those teams. But the thing that annoys me even more than that: fans thinking that they have anything at all do with their team’s success. I have nothing against traditions or superstitions-as an athlete, I have a list a mile long that I adhere to when I’m competing that would probably make you think I was crazy, but here’s the difference: I am actually the one competing when these superstitions are put in to play. Example: I have outfits that I wear in a certain order at tournaments, and it generally stays the same until something goes wrong and the outfit has to be demoted to the bottom of the pile. The fact that you as a football fan have to wear the same shirt or hat or eat the same foods every game day so that your team will win is ridiculous-you have NOTHING at all to do with how the team performs on the field. As an athlete, it’s slightly less ridiculous-does wearing my outfits in the same order have any real effect on my play? Not at all, but I THINK that it does, which affects my mental state, which affects my level of play…are you getting the point? The difference between my superstitions as an athlete and yours as a fan are on a different level-you have absolutely no influence on the outcome of a game, while my mental processes have a huge influence on the outcome of my match. So continue to cheer on your team, but please do not think that if for some reason you can’t wear your lucky shirt, your team is going to lose.

HONORABLE MENTION: People (this applies to both guys and girls) thinking that girls can’t do certain things simply because they are girls. I don’t want to get into a huge political debate, but here’s my opinion on the subject: I (as a girl) may not, in fact, be able to do certain things that guys can do, but DO NOT tell me that I can’t-let me try it and see whether or not I can. If I can’t, I will be the first person to admit it. But if I can, then you just look ridiculous for telling me that I can’t. I feel the same way Demi Moore did in “G.I. Jane”-don’t give me the steps to get over the wall until I prove to you that I need them.