Getting It Off My Chest.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.

I KNOW that these days when road rage rules, as does diversity in our Balkanized society, we're all supposed to be extratolerant, if not understanding. At the risk of sounding like an incorrigible grouch, though, I would like to spill out some long-standing personal gripes. By foisting them on the reader, perhaps I can find a kindred soul.

* Going to a motel or hotel and wanting to read a paper, book, or magazine, yet never finding a lightbulb of more than 60 watts. Also irritating are the wide discrepancies in room rates in the same places. The posting of an exorbitant rate on the room's inside door is simply a sop to make us feel that we got a bargain.

* The variation in airline fares for seats in the same section, especially if one paid a higher fare than the next person. The policy of some airlines to move seats in the economy section tour inches closer to each other, making it impossible to cross one's legs except by standing first, generates a complaint as well. Then there is the euphemism of serving a snack, when one is only handed a bag containing something akin to crushed pretzels.

Those pesky inserts

* Inserts in magazines that prevent one from turning the pages properly, always pushing three or four pages ahead. One issue of Modern Maturity, the magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), had 16 such inserts.

* Mindless TV ads making men (usually balding) look like idiots, whether eating cereal, cooking on the grill, or working to fix a plumbing problem. Often, a cynical and all-knowing wife is standing by with a smirk on her face. Since the advent of Women's Lib, Father no longer knows best.

* TV commercials in which a woman is going somewhere in a hurry, but trying to sell a product, as she moves away from the viewer. My reaction is, if she's in such a rush and doesn't have the time and courtesy to stand still for a moment, the heck with the product. In this case, it is Maalox.

* Radio disk jockeys who only know one tone level--that of shouting. Ditto tot sports announcers, excepting those in golf and tennis.

* The canned music in many fast-food places that is blaring, whose lyrics are incomprehensible, and whose "singers" are just screamers. "Elevator music" is as annoying in its own way. Doubly irritating is music played on the phone when one is put on "Hold"--and then forgotten about!

* Having to fill out endless forms before getting any attention from government agencies, banks, and sometimes even the...