WHAT IS YOUR PET AVERSION?

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 13, 17 January 1939, Page 10

WHAT IS YOUR PET AVERSION?

We all have pet aversions. We cannot explain why we dislike certain things and persons—-we only know that we do. But these instinctive dislikes have their place in the scheme of things and can even be blessings in disguise.

I COT the idea of this article through listening to the radio, writes F. P. Rousseau in the Outspan, South Africa. I was listening casually, doing something else at the same time, when an orchestra struck up Ketelby’s “In a Monastery Garden.” I swore silently, then turned off the instrument. And then I found myself wondering why I had done it.

Well, there was only one explanation, that unreasoning, instinctive dislike that is best called a “pet aversion.” No doubt to thousands of people “In a Monastery Garden” is a very beautiful bit of music. But not to me. I cannot listen to it without swearing and wanting to throw the furniture about. It gets on my nerves. It puts me in a bad mood.

I know people who feel the same way about “The Blue Danube,” to which 1 am indifferent. I have an immense liking for “Liebestraume,” but have friends whom it sends into a frenzy. We all have our pet aversions. They are not confined to music. They extend to literature, to films, to film stars, to people, to clothes, to colours, to food, to almost everything around us. Why we have them we do not know; we know only that certain things “get on our nerves” and annoy us. Psycho-analysts would try to explain these pet aversions by inquiries into our ‘“subconscious life.” To a certain extent they produce plausible explanations of our phobias. But pet aversions are something more than phobias. I do not need a psycho-analyst to explain that I am nauseated by boiled milk because in my youth I was given castor-oil in that innocuous fluid.

But 1 doubt whether any psychoanalyst could convince me that i slikc Ketelby’s music and find C a Moore’s singing intolerable and a Milton with a poisonous hatred beca e of some aspect of my unconscious r subconscious life. 1 know only th I dislike them

I have many pet avers**..- i music 1 am driven to desperate j by hearing the “Monastery Garuc r “Land of Hope and Glory.” A 5 time I nearly started throwing u » about in a restaurant when the or. tra struck up the inevitable and «r.. - - minable “Sonny Boy,” but fortun / restrained myself long enough t my bill and depart. ! In literature 1 dislike ft**.. *. Tennyson and Keats with all ti**. vour with which I admire Shelley i Donne and Byron. 1 cannot thii. t Tennyson except as an old man ri. ing sentimental cliches about cro. : the bar, or of Keats except as a yo. ster very sorry for himself and cn. ging like a kicked dog before the attr a of a few reviewers. But these impressions of greai n have not inspired dislike. They e. rather, the results of a dislike reasoning and unreasonable, but n a potent. They may be unjust, but y are in me and I cannot deny them. d my emotions will not allow me U et to and conquer them. We all have these unexplained pet aversions, and sometimes they have a profound effect on our lives. But Ido not think they are bao ir us. For one thing, they are usua 'y balanced by enthusiasms, and enthusiasm is a stimulating and admir e emotion. On the other hand, they e us something on which to differ a our fellows, something to rnak tversation and argument, and so c/ e both as an intellectual and a social