Pettiness: the only durable good your family will litigate with a smile

Pettiness is an asset class. The Redditor’s rallying cry—“Never, EVER let something go…pettiness does NOT have an expiration date”—reads like an investment memo for small-scale revenge: low maintenance, perpetual yield in the form of irritation and family lore.

Naïve micro‑model: Person A wants to signal, cheaply and repeatedly, that Person B annoyed them. Cost: a sticker, a misplaced wrench, the eternal “Or Current Resident” on a mailing label. Benefit: continuing narrative, emotional dividend, future gossip royalties. Concrete exhibit A: “My mom HATES Olaf from Frozen. Every single time my wife and I give her a gift we always find a small Olaf toy or sticker…” (laugh line: Olaf is the porcupine of pettiness—endlessly cheerful to you, pointy and unforgiving to her.) Other evidence: “Happy Birthday to your Dad!” (the internet wants Dad’s testimony), the wrench that never hit the ground, the passive-aggressive addressing that reads like a tiny, ongoing injunction.

Mock clause (for the record): Clause 12—Pettiness has no statute of limitations; it qualifies as a family tradition if repeated thrice, and as performance art if accompanied by a sticky note. In practice this is not cruelty so much as a low-cost signaling equilibrium: you could reconcile, or you could buy a smiling Olaf every year and preserve the story. The latter is cheaper and more fun.

So: keep being petty. It’s a weirdly efficient form of legacy planning—your heirs may inherit wrenches, grudges, and a drawer full of Olaf figurines, and they will tell the story with a grin. Efficient, in a “for certain values of efficient” way.