"Be 18+"

This has been bothering me for years. A few times, I've mentioned it to the people watching TV with me (or, I've mentioned it to KC more than once) and the response is sorta "meh." Sometimes they'll say "I see what you're saying" and shrug.

But it sticks out every time.

It will always bother me. But so what. It just sends a little sensation up my spine, like when someone says "shed-ool" (schedule). It's over in seconds. It's not like it really bothers me, like fingernails on a chalkboard (which, despite my sensitivities, has never bothered me much, but it bothers so many people that it's an understandable example). I don't get angry.

But "be 18 plus." It's like they're commanding someone to automatically change their age before viewing the commercial, or certainly before calling.

I think another reason it bothers me a bit is that they're so cheap. I've watched them edit at least four different commercials with the same footage. I don't know exactly when I first saw a commercial for them, but I remember them back in the Woodill days. Then, the audio and video synched better, and the full sentence at the beginning was "Callers must be 18+" (or something like that. A few years later, they had a new commercial with the same footage. Then they had one with new video shots (and some of the old ones), but the same audio. Except that the sentence had been cut to "Must be 18+".

I'm not sure how many versions there were, but now it just cuts in with the command "Be 18+" A quick and weird little order and then shots of, oh my!, the same losers from a decade (and I'm guessing longer) ago!

Two years ago it actually felt like January, and Hell stopped being the place to go on Tuesdays.