Happy Hour

Last night’s drink: Airborne.

Faced with the finality of the Friday before vacation, I was hit with a sort of rapid onset case of hypochondrial psychosis, which not only forced me to focus on every pain, twitch, sneeze and bruise on every inch of my body, but it also prompted me to visit urgent care in order to get antibiotics for what I finally concluded was an oncoming external ear infection. I was so afraid of getting sick on vacation.

After a quick once-over by the nurse practicioner, she told me I have a zit forming in my ear, and gave me a low dose of antibiotic pills to take away the germies before wishing me fun in Vegas (yes – I’ve been talking non-stop about my vacation; I am too excited to shut up).  Of course, as soon as I heard the news I instantly felt better, so I’m not going to waste the supply. I’ll just stick some oxy in there and call it good.

As I was chugging my Airborne drink in a precautionary move, I came across Nancy Grace, which I recalled as one of the shows that the TV People at work told me to watch. Apparently, she’s supposed to be the Dr. Laura of television. Since Dr. Laura is one of my guilty pleasures, I decided to give it a shot. What I actually found was just a boring sensationalist with predictable broadcast ploys. There was one idea that came up during her show, though, that I’ve actually been thinking about a little bit lately: the whole concept of people saying, “He/She would never do that. Anyone that knows Him/Her knows that they would never do anything like that.”

Usually this comes up from friends or family of an individual who has disappeared, often a mother who has appeared to have abandoned her kids but is believed to have been abducted, but also perhaps as a suspect in a crime where no clues can be found. It makes me think about how well anyone really knows anyone else. I think if you surveyed 100 people, and you asked them if they considered themselves to be crazy, at least 95 of them would say yes, to some degree. The other five are probably just delusional, which qualifies as crazy in my mind.

People have too many layers to be predictable – you never stop growing, or learning new things, so you can never know how you are going to react to new situations or stimuli until they actually happen. And then – BAM – a new layer. Your family and friends know the layers that have existed, and maybe some of the new ones you’ve taken on, but they don’t know the ones that haven’t formed yet. So maybe the friends/family could say, “Oh… Bridget would never in a million years to that,” if they monitored her life 24/7, but there’s all kinds of crazy stuff out there (correlative to all the crazy people), and so you just never know what’s going to happen next.

It happens the other way, too. I’m sure you know guys & gals that you would never describe as a “kid person,” but I bet you’ve also seen at least one of those people do a 180 when the baby situation actually comes to be. People lie to themselves and eachother, and many are very convincing. But I think many lies are based on speculation rather than deception – like, what a lie is going to do rather than what the message actually is. If lying to yourself or others brings you comfort, it may just be a default stance until you’re faced with the truth and you have to make a move.

If we are all surrounded by lies, that would help to make sense of why, really, nothing seems to make sense. But then again, what do I know – except what I’m feeding myself?