Sweat the small stuff

Can you please not drive that way?
How many times in a day must I hear these complaints, unnecessary instructions or umpteen now-too-familiar descriptions of how you feel about sweets?

My voice stumbles over unexpected tears when I explain these annoyances and just like that, it is my mother's tone, the one my brother and I commiserate about when we hear it.

Is it really so hard for you to change? Can't you do this one little thing to make me happy? I hate the person I'm becoming with you.

After the words are spent and their anger quieted, their echoes splash back in my mind. Is it really so hard for me to change? I ask you to control the person you are, and yet I behave as though I have no choice in who I am, how I respond.