The Winter Olympics and the art of complaining

There is no sport that my husband won’t watch on TV. Rugby, golf, cricket, skiing, NFL, even darts (which I contest is not actually a sport) he is there, eyes glued. Tennis, swimming, athletics, snooker (again not really a sport) he watches with rapt attention. I on the other hand rather love to fall asleep to sport on TV so basically we are very well suited couple.

It’s a nightly routine : Mr Pencil channel surfs for a while grumbling away that there is nothing good on TV and as soon as he settles on a channel and starts watching a ball being flung around a field or people testing the limits of their endurance I fall asleep.

But last night was different. Last night Mr Pencil didn’t let me sleep because he suddenly turned into one of those crotchety old men that like to write into newspapers with a fountain pen and complain to the world in general that they are unhappy.

You see he isn’t at all happy with the coverage that the Winter Olympics is getting on TV. He is quite adamant that they are not showing him enough of the people sports component and that they are in fact showing too much back story and Roy and HG (who he claims are saying the same things that they said in the Summer Games many, many, many years ago).

So what do crotchety old men do when they can’t watch what they like on TV? They complain. And even though he is behaving like a fountain-pen-wielding-senior-citizen he is actually under 50 so he began to search for an email address to complain to. While Mr Pencil cursed and muttered that he could not find an email address for the Channel 10 program director, I slunk further under the covers. If he didn’t find a sport to watch I would never be able to fall asleep.

“They don’t even have an email address listed” he yells (very softly but “yell” is a better word than “says”)
“Write to them and post it in an envelope” I snicker hoping he won’t actually take me up on this idea.
“This is ridiculous, no wonder their network is failing” he says with a certainty that belies the fact that this may have no basis in reality
“Tweet it” he demands. “Tweet Channel 10 and tell them how woeful their coverage is”
“No” I reply.

I try to explain to him that it really makes no difference and that he shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. He’s a busy (and sometimes very stressed) man and I can’t understand the fact that he would actually give so much time to finding a way to complain that he can’t find anything the sporting event he wants to watch on TV.
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And I start to think that maybe I am too complacent. I really don’t see any sense in complaining that the coverage of the Winter Olympics is shit. I don’t think that it will change anything and I think they already know their coverage is crap, after all they are the ones supplying it.

It’s not that I don’t bitch and moan about things that I am unhappy with but somehow I feel like taking the effort to find the person to complain to about the lack of ski jumps being shown at 11pm on a Wednesday night is a bit over-the-top crotchety.

I like to think Mr Pencil was not really going to complain, rather he was biding his time till the sport coverage started again, but it started me thinking about all the times people complain in shops or restaurants when service is slow or non-existent. Is getting stressed about it helpful?

And, as my mind often does, it jumped to much bigger complaints.

What if nobody complained about politicians like Scott Morrison and people that leave their animals in the car on really hot days and people that bully other people? What if nobody complained about the noises they heard from their next door neighbor when they were fighting and the man was beating his wife? What if nobody said anything about the poor conditions in nursing homes or retirement centres? What if nobody complained about treatment of the ill, the infirm or those that couldn’t speak for themselves?

Then I would really never sleep.

As it happens the half-pipe came on and all our problems were solved for the night.

Is patience really a virtue or is the real power in convincing other people to change?