Guess who’s back, back again? The complaints are back, tell a friend. Who’d you think I was gonna say, Eminem? He hasn’t been back since like 2003 (sorry Shady, didn’t mean to get you excited). Nope, it’s just Conor’s Complaints, my running column where I rant about everything that messes with my daily mojo and ticks me off. So, tell your friends, tell your social studies teacher, your mom, your grandma, your aunt, every freshman and Principal O’Neill. Matter of fact, tell everybody, because nobody’s safe, and I’m back with a whole offseason of ammunition. Year two of complaints is underway.

Dude, Where’s My Soap?

Yet another year and yet another complaint about bathrooms. You just don’t seem to get it do you bathroom vandalizers? I thought the destruction was over when the school caught the elusive bathroom bandit last spring, but sure enough, like Lifetime and Hallmark keep playing terrible movies, people keep damaging our bathrooms. This time, they’re attacking our personal hygiene by taking away the soap from the soap dispensers. We’re only three weeks into the school year and already we have to deal with this. I bet that you new bathroom bandits were just sitting around your houses all summer, giddy at the thought of school to start again so you could dismantle soap dispensers. I may sound like a broken record, but I always come back to the question of why? Are you guys looking to get into the plumbing industry and trying to study the inner workings of a bathroom? Are you desperately trying to open the Chamber of Secrets? Look, I know in Harry Potter the entry to the Chamber is in the sink, and that we all really wish Harry’s world is real, but I assure you the book is fictional and there is no such Chamber here. Even if there was, everybody knows you can’t open the doorway without speaking Parseltongue. Now there is literally no soap in the freshman hall boys’ bathroom. It is impossible to follow the fundamental rule that adults have been preaching to kids since they first used the potty: Always wash your hands. I’m pretty sure that is a health violation. Last week, I had to make a trip from the first floor bathroom to the second floor bathroom to wash my hands. I kid you not; somebody asked me for a high five on my way there. Wow, I must have looked like a jerk turning that high five down. Look what you’ve done now, soap savages. Unless teachers start stocking their rooms with Purell, pretty soon I will start using the girls’ restroom, but then I’m in trouble aren’t I? My defense in that case would be that flu season is upon us. What is the real crime here?

Smart Phone Addiction

I’m sure every teenager growing up in this generation has heard an adult tell them, “I remember when I was a kid we used to spend all our time outside exploring.” Well, pretty soon I think they’re going to tell us, “I remember back when I was a kid, we used to just use the toilet, not check our Instagram or Twitter during the process.” Really, this is what it has come to, and I’m talkin’ bout my generation. The Who? MY generation (Get it?). Well consider this our intervention. I think we all need to hear this, myself included. Can we all stop getting so caught up in our “like” totals, Snapchat stories, text messages, apps, etc.? Just for once try to be present and take in an actual moment. Think about this, when you are constantly browsing Instagram, you are watching other people live their lives instead of living your own. Any time we have a spare second or a lull in conversation we all just whip out our phones. Phones are killing our etiquette. I feel like I’m going insane because I find myself just subconsciously doing it. The worst part is, if you constantly check it, you know it’s hardly going to change from your last look. It is the equivalent of watching back-to-back episodes of SportsCenter. Yes, social media is cool for capturing memories and moments and spreading thoughts or ideas. But social media is also a huge platform for trying to show off how cool you are and its time and place is not everywhere, every second of everyday. We need to stop trying to appeal to audiences with what we do everyday and just appeal to what we want to do. So consider this a wakeup call. Don’t hit the snooze button. As the great Ferris Bueller once said, “Life goes by pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look up from your phone once in a while, you could miss it.” At least I think that’s how the quote went.

PSA

Public service announcement to the people drawing obscene body parts in the dust covering the rear windshield of my car during school hours: Please stop drawing obscene body parts in the dust covering the rear windshield of my car during school hours. Now my neighbors all think I am a hoodlum who smokes cigarettes in the bathroom at lunch. There are lots of little kids in my neighborhood and some babysitting money would be nice. Would you trust a guy who has a “garden hose” drawn on his windshield with your kids? Neither would I.