The gnashing of teeth, the rending of garments

You remember it.
That thing when you were 14 from which you were positive you would never recover. You remember it don't you? It was in March of your eighth grade year.
You see Billy, who you have been dating for, well, almost three weeks, didn't call you for two days.
sure he had two broken arms and tonsillitis but, hell, he didn't call. This is a tragedy.
If he had called you could have told him about how sally said that she was tired of your whining during passing time between health and social studies. You could have told him how that bastard Mr. R called your parents because you didn't turn your paper in on time. I mean who cares about the holocaust...it happened like a hundred years ago, right?
But no, the bastard didn't call. So you thought to yourself...'I am going to dump that guy. That's right. We won't talk on the phone anymore, I won't invite him to the party at my house (which ends at 11:00pm). That'll show the insensitive hound. That's right, he can't use me like...like a...like a, Kid.
Sound familiar?
No, no it doesn't, wanna know why? Because you are no longer 14 years old.
Neither am I.
However, this sounds very familiar to me because I hear this story (with some minor variation, to pronoun, and occasionally verb) on a nearly daily basis.
This is what I do.
I sit, listen, say exactly the same things your teachers said to you ('do you think that is what he really meant?', 'no, you are definitely somebody who people want to hang out with', 'well, we all make mistakes' and (my personal favorite) 'well, he'll never forgive himself for that one (my comments too vary by pronoun and verb)) and I know they mean nothing.
But what do I do?
Do I do the thing that I want to do?
I don't think so. I really feel like: 'wow, your trivial problem will embarrass the hell out of you once you realize that the center of the universe is not yourself. Christ, I mean, If the world did revolve around you, as you must think it does, we would fly off our axis and spin into a world full of meaningless crap. I mean we would be a living, breathing reality T.V. show called 'Hey, hey...Look at me'.
Or do I do the thing that all teachers do?
'Oh, I know. Hey, we all make our own choices. No. No, who would that help? You don't mean that. No, I don't think you do. Well, we all make our own choices. No, I didn't think you meant it. No, its OK. So, don't worry about it right now. Yes, I understand. No, you can't get a pass. No, its still due on tuesday. What? No, I can't give you a pass. Is it important? Ok, just dial 9 first. No, you can't get a pass. Well, we all make our own choices. I am glad I could help. No, I can't give you a pass. OK, I'll see you tomorrow in class.'
I always choose the latter. Why? Because My Capacity of Self-Destruction allows for co-dependency no matter how trivial.
But, hey, at least I don't have to go back to middle school. Until 8:00 tomorrow morning.

Multi-tasking

Like 95% of people my age I am ADHD.
This means that at any given moment I am thinking of three things instead of one.
For example while I am writing this (and listening to music to stay focused) I am running through my next hour,what I am supposed to be doing, what I need to have prepared, etc.

This isn't much of a liability most of the time.
Actually, it is pretty handy when I need to get a lot of stuff done.
For instance, at the grocery store, when buying ingredients for something. It is often when I am buying the basil that I will remember my car payment is due. Or when looking for the right tomato I will come up with a new lesson plan.
I have no idea why that happens, but hey, it sure is nice that it does.

My condition (which you probably have too) is only a liability when it comes to interpersonal discourse with people for whom I have little to no tender feelings.

At that point I become three people with three distinct conversations happening.
They are as follows.
1. Myself: This is the only one of the personalities that speaks out loud (god willing).
2. Dennis Miller: What I wish I were saying often drippingly sarcastic and embarrassingly self aggrandizing. This is all in my head.
3. Jimminy Cricket: My conscience chastising me for thinking of such awful things and having the temerity to assume I am any better than the person to whom I am talking. This is also all in my head.

Here is a for instance that is thoroughly abstracted from a social interaction I had with someone I hold in contempt for no reason at all.

Awful Person: Hey, Mycapacity, what's up?
Me (spoken): Oh, nothing much.
Dennis (thought): I would like to set your hair on fire.
Jimminy (thought): Jesus man, she's being nice to you, grow up.

Awful Person: Brr. It's cold today.
Me (spoken): I know, good thing we have heaters,huh?
Dennis (thought): That's the best you could do? Cold? For christ's sake its cold like eight months of the year, at least you have small talk covered for 3/4 of your life you insipid little moth.
Jimminy (thought): Dude, you were just thinking about how damn cold it was.

Awful Person: Hey do you remember that time when we were at that audition and that really annoying person kept clearing his throat.
Me (spoken): Yeah, that was really distracting.
Dennis (thought): I would much rather be listening to a phlegmmy death rattle than your ignorant prattle you miserable shrew. Why don't you go somewhere and marinate in your own mediocrity.
Jimminy: As I recall, you are keeping this conversation going Mycapacity. If you don't want to talk to her, just say good bye and stop being an ass.

Awful Person: Well, we should get some coffee and catch up sometime.
Me (spoken): Yeah that would be great.
Dennis (thought): But first I have to floss with barbed wire and gargle broken class.
Jimminy (thought): You could have said no. You could just forgive her for being slightly annoying.

Awful Person: Well, I gotta run. It was great seeing you, give me your email address.
Me (spoken): Oh, sure, here it is.
Dennis (thought): No go you miserable little wretch, find some other host to suck the life force out of.
Jimminy (thought): you are a bad person, mycapacity.

Awful Person: Bye bye.
me (spoken): Bye bye
Dennis (thought): ass.
Jimminy (thought): ooh, there's a bunny.

The same thing happens in all situations. However, I am not always full of violent tendencies. Sometimes the second voice in my head is flirty, or begs for recognition. But it always happens.

Its fortunate that I have such a strongly developed capacity for self-destruction. Anybody with a lesser one might get the many voices confused and let their subtext speak the truth. The horror. The horror.

Is that guy having a seizure?

When not falling down flights of stairs or eating my third seven layer burrito my favorite activity is running.
As far as I can tell there are two reasons for this.

One: The chemical reaction that happens when the body works to fatigue and makes me feel simultaneously happy, confident and superior.

Two: I get to listen to music un-interupted for an hour or more.

I listen to music all the time throughout my day, however there is something about keeping your body totally engaged in one activity to make the music no longer a background stimulus...but a full on internal experience.

There is a hidden cost.
When rocking out while running I have been known to turn into either Jimmy Page or the Pips.

Today I ran for seventy minutes. In that time I had to stop myself no less than ten times from playing air-guitar.

Lets paint a picture. You are in a crowded gym. Perhaps you are one of the fifty freakishly fit people taking the Step class in the little aerobics center that abuts the track.
As you are being yelled at by little tiny be-spandexed drill sergeant with a predilection for phrases like 'come on ladies, get those butts in the air', 'Woo!' and 'you guys look awesome, just 10 more' then you start seeing out of the corner of your eye a 6'3" 230 pound red faced guy in a sleevless shirt and an iPod strapped to his arm in such a way as to create a second set of love handles above and below the strap He appears to be having some kind of fit.

You think to yourself (as you get that butt up a little higher) 'gee I hope he's OK' and put the incident out of your mind for about a minute until he appears again, flush faced, sweat drenched and now you are quite sure doing some sort of interpretive dance.

All I have to say, my dear Step-Aerobicizer is that I was not having a fit, I was playing lead guitar, and I was kicking ass. That is of course until I realized I was doing it. This is a hard feeling to describe. It is a feeling like you have when you realize that not only is your fly open but you have roughly 17 ounces of coffee down your shirt and spinach in your teeth. So I stop and look both right and left and think 'whoo, I got away with that one'.

But that is not the worst of it.

Back to our little picture.
You've just been told you have 8 more reps of something that involves your head to be below your feet while holding a flexible cable in your left hand that it attached to your right heel and holding an eight pound hand weight in the other hand when you hear what can only be 'one of the special people' coming around on your left. You think, 'how brave of him to work out in public' but then you see him.

It is just the enormous spazzy guy, but this time he appears to be muttering to himself.
He must be in great pain. After all it can't be easy for a guy his size to be running around the track for so long.
You put him out of your mind and go back to 'blasting those abs'

But the next time around he sounds as though he is at his own Bar Mitzvah chanting his way into manhood.

But no,actually, I am singing back up vocals, and kicking ass once again.

Often when I hear myself and notice that I must look something like Dustin Hoffman in rain man crossed with Philip Seymour Hoffman in...anything I begin to cough as though to say...whoo...glad I passed that throat obstruction.

Can I be stopped? Nope. And truth be told I don't mind too much because I can all but guarantee that I am in somebody's gym identity short hand book.

I think we all have this. A phrase for a person whose name you don't know (and probably don't want to know). For example, I saw the following three people at the Gym this morning.

Creepy grim reaper guy (because of his many many tattoos)

Scarily fit girl (who is literally always there)

Standy McTalksalot (the hugely overweight guy who stands in the free-weight area and talks while drinking a protein shake. I have never seen him lift anything but that bottle)

So I hope that somebody goes home and says "oh, honey you have to hear what Seizure-Man was doing today".

All the Chips are Down

So, what did you have for dinner last night? Oh, really? That sounds great. Me?
Oh, you know, Potato Chips.
That's right folks, Potato Chips. More specifically Sour Cream and Dill Kettle Chips.

I was all ready to make dinner (this is a complete lie, I barely walked into the door before collapsing) and my lovely wife (she of the stolen bike)sang me a beautiful siren song that went a little something like this:

"Hey, husband, why don't we sit have a drink, some chips and start a movie?"

And like Odyseus I sailed blithly to the couch, family size potato chips and drink in hand for a brief respite before cooking our cabbage curry.

Fifty three minutes into the movie (we'll get to that later) we had eaten 7/8ths of the bag of chips and were both clutching our guts bemoaning our folly. Had we ashes to rub in our hair and garments to rend, we would have.

I suggested that I could make dinner now, but with 32 pounds of potato, salt and oil in our systems the ass-groove in the couch took on a nearly magnetic quality and there we sat for another hour and a half.

If that was not evidence enough of my capacity for self destruction the movie we watched (with a brief intermission to watch the gilmore girls (!))was of the most embarrassing kind.

Here is a run-down of the various qualities the movie had to offer.

Straight to video (should be a deal breaker right there)
From the Makers of American Pie (see above)
A sequel (really?)
involving camp, hidden cameras and dick jokes (I am no longer 17...or Adam Sandler)
and it is called: Band Camp

To say this was a bad movie is unfitting. It was misogynistic, sophomoric and racist. But, hell, I couldn't tell. I was in a Kettle Chip and burbon fugue state, my own Million Little Pieces.

I woke up this morning, my hands still smelling of the nights excesses, my gut still growning under the weight of the starchy, salty, crunchy-ness and like a frat boy waking up with puke in his hair holding a half empty can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and lying on a pile of dead Blatz cans, I vowed never to do that again.

After all the people at American Pie must be done by now.