San Francisco, a cookie, and the Dans

Do you ever feel like you’re a crazy person? I mean, I guess that by all accounts I fit into the very loose definition that is “normal”: I don’t have toes in my freezer, I don’t need to touch my head three times and turn in a circle counter-clockwise before I leave the house, and I don’t participate in ritual animal sacrifices of any kind, but still I can’t shake the feeling that something is just a little bit askew in my brain. Maybe not directly in my brain, but more in my way of thinking: in the general thought process my brain goes through in order to reach any kind of conclusion. Most of the time I just brush off these thoughts of my abnormality with some phrase usually sounding something like “I’ll bet everyone is like this, they just don’t say anything”. The problem with this excuse is two-fold. One: I think it’s untrue. Two: most of the time I’m in charge of making excuses for my behavior, not only do I deem any sort of wrong doing as completely false, but somewhere in the process, I tend to turn it into some sort of strength of mine: I am the only person who is strong enough in character to accept what everyone else just assumes is bizarre, and not only do I identify it, but I embrace it. This is probably untrue as well.
One of these cute little idiosyncrasies came out this weekend while I was in San Francisco with my dad. The first half of the first day was spent traveling around looking and apartment complexes. Super fun. We would drive from complex to complex, and then we would get out, survey it, and then everyone would talk about how great they were. I was sure in that moment why people hate white Republicans. I know that I am, in fact, a white Republican, and one day will inevitably walk around with a bunch of staunchy people I don’t know and talk about how great I am. It seems to be the burden of the beast. Anyway, these people just went walking around with this sense of elitism (at one point, I’m fairly confident that one of them had the sudden, nearly uncontrollable urge to pat me on the head), and all I could think of was how much I wanted one of the huge cookies I saw on the tray five feet ahead of me. This in and of itself isn’t crazy. I can guarantee you that anyone in my position would have tried to find any kind of solace in this sea of middle-aged men named Dan (I affectionately referred to them throughout the trip as “The Dans” due to the phenomena that they all had the same name), and a cookie was as good a salvation as any. What I can’t shake as being crazy is how much I obsessed about these cookies. I’m sure I went partially insane. I was having actual dialogue in my head about the cookies and how much I wanted to eat one, and whether or not they were homemade (definitely not, too big. Too perfect and identical). I posed questions to myself: When would be too soon to grab one? Which Dan would be the catalyst for the cookie feast? If I still wanted one, could I have two? Was it even appropriate to eat any? No one wanted to build apartments in my city. And so on.
Then the glorious moment arrived, and I devoured the cookie of my fantasies. I devoured it with a voraciousness that would suggest that I hadn’t eaten in days. Kind of like Charlie and the Chocolate factory when Charlie goes to get the chocolate for Grandpa Joe and has enough left over for one of his own. He then finds the golden ticket and later visits the scariest place imaginable, so that’s where our stories differ, but in that moment Charlie Bucket and I were kindred spirits. Once the cookie was done, though, I immediately felt completely nauseous and claustrophobic. It was as if the dream of the cookie had been enough to keep me from a complete breakdown, and once the dream was over, I had nothing left in the world. I began to sweat and look at the clock on my phone every thirty seconds, sure that if I didn’t escape the confines of my apartment disguised prison that I would surely cause a scene. Now, it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure that no one has much sympathy for the Mayor’s daughter that hyperventilates due to the fact her cookie is gone. It just doesn’t seem feasible. I did escape my tormentors, never (hopefully) to see The Dans again, but the scar remained. I had an entire episode complete with a bout of schizophrenia over a cookie. Which wasn’t that good. And made me ill for hours, incidentally.
Take the other day, for another example: I was getting dressed for class, and when I put on my jeans I found a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket. Yes, this means I don’t do laundry. Yes, I was elated. Yes, anyone would have been. Finding money is awesome. However, once I put the money in my bag, I started smiling, like an idiot, for seemingly no reason. Oh, but there was a reason. Suddenly, I became overjoyed by how much I loved pockets. Who thought of these little miracles? I mean, once Eve ate the forbidden fruit, pants were a pretty much obligatory way of life, but who was the genius that thought, I want to free the world of the burden of carrying things in their hands: put little bags in their pants. This is proof positive that there is a God and that he loves us all very much. If this isn’t enough, just think about macaroni and cheese and those markers that smell like Dimatap. Anyway, these thoughts consumed my entire day. I would be thinking about something else, completely unrelated, and then in a shining beam of light- pockets! That can’t be normal. It either has to be the act of a crazy woman, or a profoundly retarded one. I’m picking the lesser of two evils. I guess, though, if I am in fact profoundly retarded, there will come a time when my episodes grow too great to be handled by my family or loved ones, and I will be sent to a place where they feed me green Jell-o. So really, either way, win-win.
A couple of years ago, I was driving home from work, and it was late at night and I noticed something in the middle of the road; upon further inspection, I realized it was a cat. It had been run over, and was now dead. I pulled over and noticed its nametag: Tiger. I began to sob uncontrollably. I’m not a cat person, or any kind of animal rights advocate of any kind, but the thought of this cat- this pet- this creature that had been a part of a family was dead, and someone was going to have to wake up and find it. This was too much for me to retain composure. I worked out this entire scenario where the dad would wake up to get the paper and see Tiger (who he, secretly, never cared much for in the first place) lying lifeless in the middle of the street. He’d go in and tell his wife, although she would be too groggy to fully retain any kind of information until the word “dead” was used. Both of them would wonder what they would tell their daughter. She, after all, had named the beast. Tiger was her cat. At the age of five, she tormented her feline companion every second of every day, pulling its whiskers sending it sprinting down the hallway and under a bed. She would chase after it, squealing with glee and hold it close until it could wriggle from her clutches. A child’s love for an animal can be directly measured by how much they torture it, and she loved Tiger. I moved the cat onto the sidewalk so it wouldn’t be mangled any more and continued to cry on the side of the road for twenty minutes until I could finally see well enough to continue driving. I wasn’t crying because of the cat (which I’m sure sounds terrible, but it’s the truth) I was crying because this little fictitious family I had created was down a member, and they didn’t even know yet. Someone had to find it. I prayed it wasn’t going to be the little girl.
There are a million of these little peculiarities that I possess. If I’m driving on the freeway and I see a large object on the side of the road: dead body. I watch sad movies so I can cry. I’m not usually in a bad mood or anything, sometimes I just get tired of feeling bored, so I’ll create an artificial emotion. Before I do anything or go anywhere, I’ll generate innumerable scenarios for what could happen, thinking about what-if situations and figuring out my response to some really off the wall circumstances that never occur. I know every word to every song on the Paula Abdul album “Forever Your Girl”. I’m obsessed with doing bizarre things, just in case there’s ever a need for them: I can blow bubbles off my tongue, recite the alphabet backwards, and contort my body into all sorts of unreasonable positions- all on command, and all coming from a lot of practice time. I know more movie quotes than anyone I’ve ever met, and this is because I set out to have this talent. Due to a brief obsession, I am amazingly proficient in online IQ tests, and I am second only to my mom in my ability to play any Zelda game you throw at me. I have nearly psychotic breaks if anyone so much as mentions anything that has to do with changing anything that has to do with holidays- especially Christmas. I can make truly hideous faces, and I have tips on how to do so. I’m addicted to late-night infomercials. I laugh at my own jokes. All the time. Even when they’re over, I think about them later and laugh again. I stay up late at night doing nothing productive, choosing instead to write blogs.
All of this, though, is not why I’m crazy. I’m crazy because I can identify all of these “quirks”, and don’t change any of them. I buy Zelda games as soon as they come out, and don’t sleep until I’ve conquered them all. I see Superbad three times in the movie theater because I feel like I really need to be able to integrate the nuances of the movie in every day life. I will teach myself to solve a Rubik’s Cube. I will stay up late at night and write obscenely long blogs solely to entertain myself. I will continue to be crazy because without it, I’m not me. And, I’d rather be me and freak out about cookies, than someone else and be unrecognizable.