Pet peeves

I have odd pet peeves. I wonder—are they called pet peeves because we keep them, like pets, instead of getting rid of them? Most of our pet peeves are things that really don't make a difference; they're the "small stuff", if you will.

One of my pet peeves deals with phone cords. The constant picking up and putting down of any corded phone causes the phone cord to get tangled. Most people notice it before long and untangle it before it gets too knotted. I usually fix the cord after even one use, to make sure it's straight. It really gets to me when it gets so tangled that you can't even move the receiver 3 inches from the phone. Often, before I even get to make my call, I have to spend a minute or two untangling the phone cord.

Another pet peeve of mine occurs when I call and ask for someone, and the person I'm asking for happens to have answered the phone. Let's say I'm calling for Aloysius, and I ask for him when I call. My pet peeve is when Aloysius answers "this is". To me, that's a sentence fragment. I'm left hanging, waiting for a pronoun of some sort to complete the sentence. I want him to say "this is him", or "this is his aunt", or "this is the babysitter".

A related pet peeve deals with folks dropping the object of the preposition "with", as in "Can he come with?" and "I didn't bring it with". What kind of twisted ecology is this? Is there a Save Our Syllables campaign I'm not aware of? If so, drop the "with" altogether: "can he come, too?" and "I didn't bring it" are much more concise.