Poindexter has called me out like that scene in "Back to the Future Part 3" where Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen calls Marty out and Marty totally rebuffs him with an iron under his shirt like in that Clint Eastwood movie. I must respond. Here are my five strangest habits:
1) Caffeine. Many people have this addiction, but nobody reaches my level. On an average day, I drink four to five two litres of Diet Mountai Dew ... before lunch. Were this heroin or cocaine or some other scheduled narcotic, I would have likely passed away years ago. Instead, I am setting myself up for a massive anxiety/heart attack.
2) Counting. I count everything. Always. WHen I was a kid, I used to count the number of steps it took to get from school to my front door. I used to count how many times my teachers would say a simple word like "the" or "as" in an hour. Or a day. Recently I counted exactly how many job applications I sent out before I was hired at OSU. The answer: 8941. There's nothing wrong with that. Definitely. Definitely nothing wrong with that.
3) Book collecting. Like Poindexter, I collect books incessantly. It's soothing, really. You could have a bad day, but it all goes away if you can find a first or second edition of "The Natural" by Bernard Malamud. Or a dogeared copy of your favorite E.L. Doctorrow novel. This is probably some kind of mental disease, but at least it is one that makes you appear as though you are significantly more intelligent than everybody else. Because, really, who else do you know with six copies of, "The Old Man and the Sea?"
4) Talking to myself. In the span of a single day, I convinced myself into and out of belief in socialist economic theory through a three-way debate with myself. The homeless man next to me on the bus got up and walked away after five minutes. I was just a little too crazy for him.
5) The jaw thing. If you've ever hung out with me for any length of time, you know about the Jaw Thing. I am lost in concentration. MY jaw hangs slack and then slowly begins moving up and down in rigid motions. This increases in speed until I either notice what I am doing and stop or pull a maxillofacial muscle and thus spend the next 5-10 minutes writing on the floor in pain. This is either a deeply ingrained habit or a mild form of Tourette's. I hope its the latter, because I'd love to have an excise to swear at people I don't like and then say, "I didn't mean anything, dude. I'm just crazy!"
Reading over that list, I realize that I probably do suffer from a few mental deficiencies. Or, rather, I revel in them!
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2 comments:
Now that I have laid out my psychotical difficulties for the world to see, I hope Tim will respond in kind and agree to be in my play.
I respond in kind, and am inches away from agreeing to be in your play. Enjoyed our conversation last night too.
1) This, as you saw, is a habit that I break when it gets to toxic levels. If my head hurts without it I let my head ache for a day or two until I don't need it anymore.
2) I prefer "estimating."
3) We share this one; though I've never read E.L. Doctorrow ( I must soon).
4) I do this too, but mainly with absurd comments that mean nothing and are uttered in ridiculous accents. I've never knowingly done this around other people.
5) I think my jaw stays relatively put, so I'd don't have a good excuse to curse at others. Rather waht happens is that my eyes glaze over and people can tell I'm not even noticing their existence.
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