Marc
I skipped out on the post-evening/pre-bedtime BLARG session last night to try and get into A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Color me 50 pages, and call me surprised. When I'm done reading, I'll ask if its a true story, but until then, don't tell me.
Its almost six p.m. now, and I still haven't eaten. See, we switch parking spots every week now, seeing as how they closed the big parking lot next door, and mine's parked a few blocks away on Cherry Street. I get extremely paranoid about the well-being of my car while its not here, and not easily visible. Has anyone broken into it? Did someone key it? Did it get towed? Did I get a parking ticket? Zook's truck got broken into something like two or three times in a university sponsored lot, which was well-lit and sometimes patrolled by law enforcement. Mines on a dark, out of the way street. All of the above are valid questions, but I also have a phobia of carrying things while walking back from wherever I last parked. I don't know quite why, but I've had this fear the past few years that people driving by me will yell obscenities and profanites at me if I have something cradled in my arms. For example, last night I bit the bullet and bought the apartment a fresh supply of toilet paper (24 rolls) and paper towels (8 rolls). I had to carry this all from where I parked my car, not to mention the fact that I drove around for a good ten minutes trying to find a decent spot. I cower when cars drive past me, and I shudder to think of what might go through my brain if I actually had to make direct eye contact with someone if they physically walked by me on the sidewalk.
I think this phobia can somewhat be attributed to my upbringing in my particular neighborhood. I've kind of been stretching the truth about the whole Kankakee thing. I grew up in Bourbonnais, just outside a neighborhood called Briarcliff, which happened to be where all my friends lived. Kankakee, Bradley, and Bourbonnais are neighboring communities. You can't tell where one ends and the other begins unless you've lived there for a while. But I digress. My friends and myself used to sneak around late at night while we were in middle school and junior high. I'm sure a good percentage of you have done the same thing: you put on black sweatshirts, black sweatpants, black ski masks, etc etc and try to wreak havoc on the people nearest you whom you didn't particularly like. For us it was this kid named Jason D. We hated him, and henceforth tp'd his house, ding-dong-ditched him, and on and on. Everytime you saw a car, there was that fear of it being a cop, and the subsequent fear of getting hauled in, thrown in jail, disrespected, and so forth. So, we'd duck behind something everytime a passing car would approach. It got to be such a commonplace occurence that I would do the same if I were riding my bike home at night. On more than a few occasions, passing motorists were older, high school aged males who thought it would be funny to chase us as we sped away on our bikes. I come from an area filled with goons.
Who's to say whether or not these experiences are feeding into my current phobias. My Dad told me that I was "the quirkiest person he'd ever met" because I have a list of fears, phobias, and things I won't do. I'm trying to put the list all down on paper, but its really extremely hard to think of them. Its more just a "as the situation arises" type of thing. I'll try and keep you posted in the coming weeks. I can tell you this -- I am about to go to Taco Bell, and am seriously contemplating taking Matt's parking spot while he's away so no one will see me walking down the street with a pop and a chili-cheese burrito in my hands. Such a horrifying thing to have happen to a boy.
I skipped out on the post-evening/pre-bedtime BLARG session last night to try and get into A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Color me 50 pages, and call me surprised. When I'm done reading, I'll ask if its a true story, but until then, don't tell me.
Its almost six p.m. now, and I still haven't eaten. See, we switch parking spots every week now, seeing as how they closed the big parking lot next door, and mine's parked a few blocks away on Cherry Street. I get extremely paranoid about the well-being of my car while its not here, and not easily visible. Has anyone broken into it? Did someone key it? Did it get towed? Did I get a parking ticket? Zook's truck got broken into something like two or three times in a university sponsored lot, which was well-lit and sometimes patrolled by law enforcement. Mines on a dark, out of the way street. All of the above are valid questions, but I also have a phobia of carrying things while walking back from wherever I last parked. I don't know quite why, but I've had this fear the past few years that people driving by me will yell obscenities and profanites at me if I have something cradled in my arms. For example, last night I bit the bullet and bought the apartment a fresh supply of toilet paper (24 rolls) and paper towels (8 rolls). I had to carry this all from where I parked my car, not to mention the fact that I drove around for a good ten minutes trying to find a decent spot. I cower when cars drive past me, and I shudder to think of what might go through my brain if I actually had to make direct eye contact with someone if they physically walked by me on the sidewalk.
I think this phobia can somewhat be attributed to my upbringing in my particular neighborhood. I've kind of been stretching the truth about the whole Kankakee thing. I grew up in Bourbonnais, just outside a neighborhood called Briarcliff, which happened to be where all my friends lived. Kankakee, Bradley, and Bourbonnais are neighboring communities. You can't tell where one ends and the other begins unless you've lived there for a while. But I digress. My friends and myself used to sneak around late at night while we were in middle school and junior high. I'm sure a good percentage of you have done the same thing: you put on black sweatshirts, black sweatpants, black ski masks, etc etc and try to wreak havoc on the people nearest you whom you didn't particularly like. For us it was this kid named Jason D. We hated him, and henceforth tp'd his house, ding-dong-ditched him, and on and on. Everytime you saw a car, there was that fear of it being a cop, and the subsequent fear of getting hauled in, thrown in jail, disrespected, and so forth. So, we'd duck behind something everytime a passing car would approach. It got to be such a commonplace occurence that I would do the same if I were riding my bike home at night. On more than a few occasions, passing motorists were older, high school aged males who thought it would be funny to chase us as we sped away on our bikes. I come from an area filled with goons.
Who's to say whether or not these experiences are feeding into my current phobias. My Dad told me that I was "the quirkiest person he'd ever met" because I have a list of fears, phobias, and things I won't do. I'm trying to put the list all down on paper, but its really extremely hard to think of them. Its more just a "as the situation arises" type of thing. I'll try and keep you posted in the coming weeks. I can tell you this -- I am about to go to Taco Bell, and am seriously contemplating taking Matt's parking spot while he's away so no one will see me walking down the street with a pop and a chili-cheese burrito in my hands. Such a horrifying thing to have happen to a boy.
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