WHAT IS YOUR PET AVERSION?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 4, 6 January 1939, Page 3

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 GOT 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 I 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 psycho* analyst could convince me that I dislike Ketelby’s music and find Grace Moore’s singing intolerable and hate Milton with a poisonous hatred because of some aspect of my unconscious ol subconscious life. I know only that I dislike them. I have many pct n versions. In music 1 am driven to desperate deeds by hearing the “Monastery Garden” or "Land of Hope and Glory.” At one time I nearly started throwing teacups about in a restaurant when the orchestra struck up the inevitable and Interminable “Sonny Boy,” but fortunately restrained myself long enough to get my bill and depart. In literature 1 dislike Milton and Tennyson and Keats with all the fervour with which I admire Shelley and Donne and Byron. I cannot think of Tennyson except as an old man rhyming sentimental cliches about crossing the bar, or of Keats except as a young* ster very sorry for himself and cringing like a kicked dog before the attacks of a few reviewers. But these impressions of great men have not inspired dislike. They arq rather, the results of a dislike unreasoning and unreasonable, but no less potent. They may be unjust, but they are in me and I cannot deny them, and my emotions will not allow me to sei to and conquer them. We all have these unexplained pet aversions, and sometimes they have a profound effect on our lives. But I do not think they are bad for us. For one thing, they are usually balanced by enthusiasms, and enthusiasm is a stimulating and admirable emotion. Gn the other hand, they give us something on which to d : ffer from our fellows, something to make conversation and argument, and so serve both as an intellectual and a social fillip.