Thursday, March 31, 2005
Fear Factor
Sometimes I am paranoid. I’m not saying I believe that the ancient astronauts are spying on me or that the government has implanted a chip in my brain to make me shop at The Container Store, but I do have some odd fears. I always stand at least three feet away from the edge of the el platform lest I stumble in the path of an oncoming purple line express, I categorically refuse to eat at the Subway where I once saw a girl pick her nose with her sandwich-making gloves on, regardless of who the sandwich artist is that day, and I once prowled the hallways of my childhood home wielding a Badge-A-Minute buttonmaker to protect me from the intruders I was sure lurked in the linen closet. Suffice it to say this boy has issues.
But recent events have, if possible, made me even more insane. If you follow the news (and you totally should – it’s like One Tree Hill, but substantially less cute and with more genocide) you probably know that there’s been a little trend of employees of the judicial system getting shot lately. So every morning when I roll into my courthouse for work, I find myself thinking "Hey, that guy’s sort of preternaturally bald. Could he be an angry skinhead?" or "Interesting set of crazy eyes on that woman. I wonder if she’s packing heat." Of course, half the time someone approaches me twitching and muttering unintelligibly, it turns out to be one of my coworkers, but spending hours reading immigration decisions can definitely have that effect on people. So can a single episode of Hannity & Colmes.
Not that any of this is really brings me down too much, though. I think it was about the time they told us that terrorists were planning to cropdust the Midwest with poison gas that I decided I wasn’t going to let unfocused worry ruin my days. I think my unabashed love of Taco Bell and Arby’s is far more likely to kill me than any well-armed nutcase and, regardless, we all have to go someday, right? I promise I’ll have my ashes scattered over the blog.
Sometimes I am paranoid. I’m not saying I believe that the ancient astronauts are spying on me or that the government has implanted a chip in my brain to make me shop at The Container Store, but I do have some odd fears. I always stand at least three feet away from the edge of the el platform lest I stumble in the path of an oncoming purple line express, I categorically refuse to eat at the Subway where I once saw a girl pick her nose with her sandwich-making gloves on, regardless of who the sandwich artist is that day, and I once prowled the hallways of my childhood home wielding a Badge-A-Minute buttonmaker to protect me from the intruders I was sure lurked in the linen closet. Suffice it to say this boy has issues.
But recent events have, if possible, made me even more insane. If you follow the news (and you totally should – it’s like One Tree Hill, but substantially less cute and with more genocide) you probably know that there’s been a little trend of employees of the judicial system getting shot lately. So every morning when I roll into my courthouse for work, I find myself thinking "Hey, that guy’s sort of preternaturally bald. Could he be an angry skinhead?" or "Interesting set of crazy eyes on that woman. I wonder if she’s packing heat." Of course, half the time someone approaches me twitching and muttering unintelligibly, it turns out to be one of my coworkers, but spending hours reading immigration decisions can definitely have that effect on people. So can a single episode of Hannity & Colmes.
Not that any of this is really brings me down too much, though. I think it was about the time they told us that terrorists were planning to cropdust the Midwest with poison gas that I decided I wasn’t going to let unfocused worry ruin my days. I think my unabashed love of Taco Bell and Arby’s is far more likely to kill me than any well-armed nutcase and, regardless, we all have to go someday, right? I promise I’ll have my ashes scattered over the blog.
