Confessions of a Snobaholic

I will begin with an observational aside. I wrote this sitting in a Starbucks, drinking coffee, having finished reading The 19th Wife. Some guy sat at the table for two previously occupied by two drug reps strategizing how they can piss me off in my doctor’s office by describing their inducements to get seen more rapidly. Anyway, single married dude is staring intently at the butts and legs of these three chicks in shorts and miniskirt. He is staring at them with such pervy intensity that I am tempted to pour the ice from my iced latte on his lap. Of course, in his testosterone induced oblivion he probably wouldn’t notice. This is why women think men are pigs. If he had any finesse at all, he’d wear dark, European sunglasses. He would look like a dork, but it would be less obvious he was a perv.

Back to business….

Recently my mom brought it to my attention that I am a snob. What began the conversation is lost to memory, but where it ended up still burns brightly in my mind. At first, I was not happy as I see myself as a defender of the proletariat, the oppressed, the forgotten. How, then, is it possible anyone would think I am a snob?

So, I began searching for clues. I settled on the following evidence. I refuse to drink regular coffee as life is too short to drink crappy coffee. I refuse to eat cheese that tastes like plastic or has the words “cheese food product” in its name on a regular basis. I have a habit of shouting out corrections for crimes against grammar perpetrated on television. My current peeve is the use of less instead of fewer. (If you can count it, use fewer; if not, use less: e.g. There are fewer potato chips in this bag than this can of pressed, freeze dried potato product. There is less air in this scuba tank James Bond used to find the decoder machine in the sunken sub than this full air tank.) I will admit I spent a fair amount of time in high school mitigating the worst of my accent because people think a Southern accent equals stupid. I have long given up knitting with cheap acrylic yarn, favoring instead indie hand dyed yarn.

After 5 minutes of thinking about it, I began to wonder how I didn’t pick up on the signs of my snobbery earlier. Pontificating on that for 5 minutes, I was horrified to realize that it was true, I am a snob and not just about a few things, but about tons of things. Five minutes after that, I began to think about how snobs get such a bad rap.

What’s so wrong with being a snob? Without snobs, we would still be drinking unfiltered beer, living without refrigeration, would not have air bags in cars, mani pedis, or handpaint yarn.