Joseph Heller frustrated me sometimes
with his back and forth contradictions;
but I'd still recommend this book because
I laughed and wanted to be Yossarian's friend.
I only take recommendations of
books seriously if I trust the
person and if they convince me.
Although I love my sister, telling
me to read Twilight because it's
about unquenchable love doesn't cut it.
Apparently, according to chapter 2,
Sedaris took up smoking and it rid
him of his tics for the most part.
I took up smoking for a while, but then
realized I was doing it to be cool.
I stopped after three weeks when
coughing became a regular thing for me.
After finishing the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (Theodore and I started it only a couple days ago), I began reading David Sedaris' Naked.
(Side note: I don't always do nothing all day. I had plans: picnic in Long Beach with best friend, then work, then hang with Theodore. But then I tried this experiment yesterday. I really hate cashiering. I do. It's probably the worst job for me, besides clothes retail because I can barely dress myself. So I'm trying this new thing to force myself to be happy at work and then trick myself into being happier overall. I heard that the healthiest people are always the happiest ones, to which I said, "Well, of course they're happy. They're healthy for fuck's sake." But apparently it's the other way around. The studies go that they're healthy because they are happy. I started thinking, for instance, about Julia Child. She ate so much rich food all the time and she lived until she was 95 or something like that. From what I can tell from the movie Julie and Julia, she was a pretty happy woman who had passions and was excited about life. I thought maybe that was the solution to a long and healthy life. I did an okay job yesterday at forcing myself to be happy ringing up rude costumers, one in particular that threw things at me, wore sunglasses inside and had the smallest breasts I've ever seen. But my contrived joy did not work. Oddly enough, I woke up sick this morning, the first time since March I think. So today, I played Bananagrams and Scrabble with my mom, finished my book, and started another. And curled up in a ball for an hour. I am not lazy. I am sick. Okay, you didn't have to read that. It was just so you don't think less of me.)
Naked is kind of a memoir of David Sedaris' life. A friend recommended it to me and it's fantastic. I just finished reading the chapter on his "plague of tics" and it got me thinking about my own.
How could such a normal girl like myself have tics, you ask? Oh, you are so presumptuous. Although my tics may have been self-induced for attention seeking reasons, they had been and are currently quite serious and are not to be taken lightly.
I used to have to count ceiling tiles and I thought that was so cool. I thought I was so cool and artistic to have such a tic where I would sit down in a movie theater with friends and I would automatically look up to assess the squares and patterns of right angles. Then I realized that a lot of people have tics like that, counting things and such. And since I'm no rain man, I gave that one up because I didn't want any smart ass to grab me, flash a jar of M&Ms in my face and make me tell him the exact number.
I don't know why I wanted a tic so bad to be honest. I guess it was the same reason I got jealous when a kid broke his arm and came to school in a cast. Everyone would ask him what happened and he'd get to talk about himself all day. I never broke a bone, because I was chicken and didn't climb trees or walls or anything then. Tics seemed like the perfect solution. Just get a weird, unique one and people will think you're special and different and eccentric. All the good artists were eccentric.
I can't remember the other tics I went through until I landed on one that stuck. What is so fantastic about this one is that it wasn't forced at all. It birthed itself on its own, right there. Out of a tragedy came a beautiful, individualistic quality I can call my own.
As many know, I am legally blind in my left eye, which has given to my sometimes cross-eyed appearance and my always lack of depth perception. During the first nine months of having my license, I was in three car accidents, all of which were my fault and all of which were due to my inability to determine the distance between my car and another. They were minor, and the emotional damages were always deeper than physical. I have never been in a car accident since, and I like to think that my safe driving is all thanks to my tic.
Now while driving, I constantly gauge myself with four important checkups: is my gear in drive? (which is weird because I'm driving forward) in my E-break down? (done that one too many times) is my gas tank closed? (even if I haven't gotten gas in a week) and is my rearview mirror in alignment with my rear window? (weird because I'm the only one who drives my car)
I do these things about every 10 minutes. It's not that big of a deal when I'm just driving to school or to work. But up to Erin's, kind of annoying. Down to Elle's, irritating. When I used to drive to LA twice a week, a nightmare.
But now that I have this thing I can't give it up. And not because I can brag about, because I don't, I am slightly more mature than I was in elementary school. I can't give it up because I believe deep down that those regular surveys are what keep me in one piece.
I hate driving. Since I don't like listening to music that much and I can only take so much of Rush's exclamations, I'd rather walk every where. Some day, I shall live in a city where I sit next to strange people on the metro and accidentally sit in gum and complain to my roommate about public transit, but she will be too busy calculating gas prices and car insurance since she doesn't have my tic and just got into an accident because she was driving in reverse for 15 minutes and had no idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment