People like us have conversations with ourselves in our heads all the time. I think that’s why we refer to ourselves in the third person plural.
People like us wake up with sore ears every morning because our pillows are too hard and don’t allow room for our ears to sink in a little. We lay there with it plastered against the side of our head all night and then wake up sore for a little while, while it adjusts to sticking back out again. We wonder if there’s such a thing as a pillow with ear holes.
Along the same lines, people like us sit at our work desk all day, every day of the year with our space heaters turned up on high because our feet are so cold. But when we’re sleeping at night, we have to stick our bare feet out of the covers because they get so hot. You know how newborn babies sometimes have their days and nights mixed up? Well, people like us have that too. But only as far as our feet are concerned.
People like us are typically pretty responsible but also incredibly forgetful. Like me, for instance. I do the budget for our family and I pay our bills and I do it really well. But the other day someone asked me what our gas budget must be for the month with all of the driving that we do. I responded, “Yeah, it’s pretty high. I don’t know – somewhere around $500 a month?” Ha! I just looked up what we spend on gas a month and it’s between $165 and $195. Not really anywhere near $500. See, people like us love to spend all this time setting things up and planning and organizing for the sole purpose of forgetting about it. Because there’s only just room for so much in there.
People like us hate Halloween and can’t wait for it to be over. Not because we think it’s evil, but because we think it’s too much darn work.
People like us live inside of ourselves and sometimes can’t find the way out. Like just this week I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that most of my memories of childhood are from times spent alone. I had a loving family and the world’s cutest little brothers and a mom and dad who created wonderful memories for us and yet everything I’ve ever been profoundly affected by has been from a time when I was not with other people, but by myself. This has got me to thinking about my own children and how they might be the same as me, therefore rendering everything I do for them…what? Forgettable? Worthless? Or worse yet, they might be the exact opposite of me and therefore I am failing them by not making enough “together” memories. You just can’t win, as a parent. You just can’t win.
People like us say things in blogs like these that we’ll make a list of our top ten favorite books (or movies, or songs…) but in reality, we’re paralyzed by the thought and it will probably never happen. First of all we can’t order things into favorites when everything in the universe stands alone, as is, on its own merit. We don’t see lines or orders. We see rivers that flow into one another and sometimes run backwards. Second of all, more than anything in the world, we can’t tolerate somebody not loving something that we love. It sends us into a tailspin. So we don’t share and we just have our own little private tornado in our soul.
People like us love rainy, cloudy days and we feel sad for people who don’t. We also feel a little put out, because we don’t sit around talking about how bad the weather is on the sunny days that make those people come alive. But on the days that make us come alive, the world seems determined to bring us down. I don’t think news anchors should complain about rainy weather. It’s not fair and balanced reporting. And it makes me hate them.
And yes, people like us love sad songs. We love emotion and we love to cry. But that doesn’t mean we don’t love happy songs too.
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My mom taught me to never start a new book before finishing the last one. For some reason, this was very important to her and for some reason, I listened. For my whole life, I’ve had extreme discipline when it comes to books. They are meant to be finished when started and I usually do it, no matter how much I regret it. I find myself feeling strangely indebted to the characters no matter how much I hate them. I feel like I owe it to them to find out how their story ends. It doesn’t matter that I know they’re not real. I tell myself they’re not real over and over and that just makes me feel more guilty. It’s like they’re the Whos in Whoville and I am their last hope for protection so that they’re not wiped into oblivion forever. I mean, somebody has to believe in them, right?
Fierce Peace 