Horrid Little Girl

Top right leg, top left leg, bottom left leg, bottom right leg.

Yesterday I forgot bottom right.  It was a very uncomfortable day.

Just because of the last two words of my blog and the fact that I frequently drop F-bombs, does not mean that you will find what you are looking for here.  And here’s a little tip for you: police officers like to catch bad guys like you.  It’s illegal to look at what you want to look at.  Some of the sites you visit are actually created by those officers to catch you.  You’re gonna get busted, dude.  Your face will be splashed all over the papers.  Moms will look up your name on the sexual offender’s website and drive past your house at all hours of the day, harrassing you at home or out in public.  You don’t want that, do you?  So stop your dirty little searches and stop clicking on my blog thinking youre going to find any of that.

Thank you,

Horrid

So I took one of those online OCD tests and it said that it was more than likely that I have OCD, and that I should make an appointment with a professional immediately.  Immediately was bolded.

But I know I don’t have OCD for three reasons.

1.) It doesn’t interfere with my life.  Repeatedly checking to make sure I have my credit card in my wallet at the restaurant only takes a few seconds.

2.) No one notices or comments.  No one hears me counting, no one sees inside my brain, no one witnesses the picking or pulling. 

3.) If I really did have OCD, I woud have taken the test a dozen more times to make sure I got the correct result. 

So, tendencies; maybe.  Disorder; no.

But then I was in class yesterday and I was looking at the flipflopped foot of the person next to me.  All I could think about was licking her foot.  I have no desire to lick her foot.  Feet are possibly the least attractive body part.  And the rest of her isn’t my type anyway.  That still didn’t stop me from thinking about it though.  And anyway, as long as I know one person who is worse than me, I’m OK.  And I think I know two.  So that’s good.  Two is a good strong number.

But I guess that’s what happens when you sleep through half of  True Love.  My sleep schedule is out of whack now.  Normally I’m the vampire, staying up later and later each night and waking up later and later each morning.  But now I’m waking up at 5 or 6am.  It’s kind of nice, I like the few hours of peace before the rest of the world is wide awake.  But the downside is that my eyelids start getting heavy around 7pm. 

We went to dinner with the inlaws recently.  Chory pollo from my favorite little Mexican joint.  We came back to the house after and sat outside chit chatting.  It was getting late, but I kept my sunglasses on the whole time.  I’ve been looking for some old school mirrored aviator shades but haven’t found any yet.  I have to make do with my very dark lenses.  I like to stare at people without them knowing.  Apparently my 5 am wake up calls mean I also like to fall asleep behind my glasses in the middle of conversations.  I managed to stay upright as I drifted in and out of sleep while their voices droned on.

I only woke up when the conversation turned to me, and I was asked a question.  Luckily the FIL doesn’t really converse with me, even if he asks a direct question it’s only meant as a pause in his monologue.  I tiptoed around answering until I knew exactly what they were talking about (the old Dairy Queen where I used to work in HS) but by then it didn’t even matter because the monologue had picked right back up again.

FIL has three stories that he tells repeatedly every single time we are together.  OK, that’s an exaggeration.  He tells one of them every single time; the other two are usually only told every third or fourth visit.  They all revolve around the same person (his neighbor), they all follow the same theme (belittling the neighbor for his laziness/stupidity), and they all lack a vital component of storytelling (being of interest to the audience).

#1 (always told) Neighbor doesn’t understand the idea of a pump in a water pond, wonders aloud why the pond doesn’t overflow from the fountain.

#2 (occasionally told) Neighbor paints his basketball backboard but lazily only paints the front side.

#3 (occasionally told) Neighbor decides to paint his chain fence with a small pot of paint and tiny brush, until it’s pointed out that it will take him a long time and he will need more paint, at which point he gives up and goes back inside.

Previously we would hear one story here and there.  Lately, one story reminds him of the rest so we must suffer through all three in a row.  After hearing them so many times it’s become difficult to respond with the required laughs, sighs, or head shakes that he is fishing for.  Because of this he has begun to embellish-drawing out the look of puzzlement on neighbor’s face as he looks at the pond, elongating the conversation about the lack of enough paint, describing the can of paint in greater detail, laughing hysterically at the idiot neighbor.

I’ve found myself taking the neighbor’s side in my mind.  I recreate the encounters with a new spin, making the neighbor a bit of a trickster messing with FIL.  I envision the neighbor sitting around with his family, “…and he thought I was serious when I asked about the pond overflowing, isn’t that hilarious?!”  The stories are boring though, and there isn’t enough material to really get creative.

So mostly I just sit there, numbly waiting for it to be over.  There’s only one thing that stops me from butting in and cutting him off with a curt reminder that we’ve heard it before (which probably wouldn’t work anyway.  He’s a notorious serial punchline repeater).  The only redeeming value is watching his new wife squirm.  She is a know it all monopolizer, hijacking every conversation she can.  But she can’t hijack this one.  It’s not her story to tell.  She knows it word for word, she’s had to sit through it more times than I have, but she wasn’t there and can’t ever own it. 

So she sits and squirms, opening and closing her mouth like a carp, just waiting for the right pause to jump in and steer to more familiar ground.  Excepts sometimes she presses her lips together in such a way that I know it’s killing her to listen to the story yet again.  That expression makes it a little more bearable.  But only a little more bearable.  Not even enough to keep me from falling asleep in my chair.

The good news is, I probably don’t have to hear that story again for at least a month.