I found this T-shirt on a recent trip up to the in-laws that I kind of had to have. It expresses "me" perfectly. It says:
You laugh at me because I'm different
I laugh at you because you're all the same.
Well, I don't always laugh, come to think of it. Sometimes I want to scream. Sometimes I feel pity. Usually, I just don't get it.
What don't I get? Well, for one thing, the cult of celebrity. I don't understand why so many people spend so much time, money and mental energy tracking every little detail in lives that will probably never impact theirs in any way.
Since I am a big hockey fan, I'm willing to bet people think I can rattle off vital stats for every Toronto Maple Leaf player. I can't. There are two of them I would probably recognize if they came up and said hello--Mats Sundin and Tie Domi--but I couldn't tell you the first thing about their lives off the ice.
I actually take pride in my ignorance. During the O.J. Simpson trial--the kind of event I expend great effort ignoring--somebody told me a Kato Kaelin joke and I didn't have the slightest idea who that was. I'd make a perfect juror if it wasn't for my dad the lifelong police officer.
Once, when I worked at 7-Eleven, I served Elvis Stojko. (No, it didn't change my life or make me a better person in any way. And it wouldn't have done so even had I recognized him.) My co-worker was in the back room at the time and emerged just as he was getting into his chauffered limousine. She actually slapped me with a sheaf of papers, over and over, in time to "HOW could you POSSibly not KNOW who that WAS?" All the while I was wondering how in the hell she recognized him, and I made the mistake of saying so, earning a "God, you're dumb" look.
Sexual fantasies about celebrites confound me. The mental calisthenics required to make myself believe (a) I might actually meet Kate Winslet and (b) she'll immediately drop to her knees and [......], well, they're just too tiring.
I am firmly convinced this would be a better world if celebrities were let alone to live their lives, and filmed only with their knowledge and permission.
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Another thing that earns me a lot of strange looks is my taste in music. I have a very broad range of musical acts I like, but comparatively few are popular these days.
Take, for example, John McDermott. For those (all) of you who have no idea who that is, he sings old Irish and Scottish folk tunes, some of them dating back five or more centuries. He also does tunes from the 1930s and 40s. We've been to a couple of his concerts. Both times we were younger than the rest of the audience by an average of one hundred and seventeen years.
I used to work a lot of graveyard shifts, at McDonald's and 7-Eleven both. I'm not a night person and never was; it just so happened that in first year university residence, it was impossible to sleep any time before three in the morning, what with the constant lacrosse games in the hallway, drunk people careening off the walls, and omnipresent par-tay. So, I reasoned, seething, if I was just going to lay here awake, I might as well be paid.
Anyway, to get me through the nights, I'd bring in classical music, New Age music, opera, anything in that ilk so long as it was slow and soothing. I must have had three hundred people remark on it over the years, usually some variant of "Why aren't you falling ASLEEP?" I would always shrug the question off because I couldn't very well tell the truth. "This music may put you to sleep, but what it does for me is keep me from leaping over the counter and strangling obnoxious drunks."
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Which brings up another thing that has convinced people I'm actually from Rygel-6. What in God's name is the deal with alcohol?
An old roommate of mine (who should probably remain nameless) once drank himself into such a stupor that he threw up, shit himself, and passed out. He came to four hours later with dried puke running down the front, dried shit running down the back, and a head that apparently felt like a cement mixer on high. He vowed he'd never drink again. That lasted a week.
Okay, I (sort of) understand addiction, but not one so strong that it would cause your mind to dismiss the spectre of yourself covered with shitty puke. "Oh, that was fun, let's do that AGAIN!"
It's not just the hard-core alcoholics. I saw an awful lot of people parading through my store in the wee hours of the morning, forty-seven sheets to the wind. Almost without exception, they were rude, prone to violence and petty theft, and SO FREAKING LOUD!!! What I'm trying to say is that drunk people act like brain-dead imbeciles. What's the attraction in acting like a brain-dead imbecile? Damned if I know.
I got drunk once. Once. Just to see what the big hullabaloo was. I found that I knew and understood everything that was going on around me and I just didn't care. I'm not sure how many degrees of blotto there are beyond that, and I sure don't have any pressing need to find out. It's not fun when Reason goes absent without (or with) leave. It's disturbing.
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I've never climbed a tree. Never done anything like that. I've never been the most co-ordinated person, and the risk of falling out and breaking something, in my case, is just too high. Those of you who tell me I missed out on all the fun, go fall out of a tree and tell me how much fun you're having.
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Part II to follow.
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