Delicious dread

I don't store most people's numbers because then I'd lose all reason to pick up my phone. I really love and hate not knowing who's going to be on the line. Everytime my phone rings, I get nervous. Until I see a name and then it's all shot to shit.

Everybody's somebody's fool

My aunt used to wistfully sing this Connie Francis song to me from a tattered book that had taken her through her loneliest times in the army. I was just about six, or maybe eight, but even I could tell there was a sad story in there somewhere. Over the years we heard murmurs of a certain Captain Y and a Lieutenant X and a whole string of other designations but she took her secret with her when she died an old spinster four years ago.

Cut to 2009, and I am finally seeing that this Connie person was really onto something there. Everybody IS somebody's fool, everybody IS somebody's play-thing! And there are no exceptions to the ru-u-ule. Yes everybody's somebody's foo-ool! It really is a very catchy song.

Anyway.

Like I was saying. I've realised the hard way, that we all have one person who makes self-respect seem like a bell and whistle. It doesn't matter that you can list ten reasons for why this person doesn't deserve even your memory, without batting an eyelid. It matters even less that your friends are wincing at just how many times he/she shuts you down. And should this person make a gesture that only technically, after really having searched for it, qualifies as a nice thing, to you it's the equivalent of a kitten and a puppy baby, a kittuppy! You can't remember why you even considered considering cutting this person out of your life. Until he/she does it again.

Are these people walking genital warts? I don't think so. Are they awesomeness-incarnate? Nope, that they're not. It's what we ascribe to them that makes them so irreplaceable. And when you figure what that is, this person begins to unravel before your eyes. And suddenly it's blindingly clear that this person is just another person. And you were here before him/her and you will continue to be here now that he/she is gone.

That is closure.

Need. Air. Now.

In my observations of human behaviour (which generally involves watching friends through the comforting haze of beer and then extrapolating the conclusions to cover the whole of humanity - yep, it's a science), people derive almost sexual pleasure from knowing they have friends in common. There's gasping, impassioned name-calling, heavy breathing and such other excited noises.

I used to understand this peculiar behaviour once. Who doesn't like a good co-incidence to break the drudgery of the day? Noone likes to turn down a 'What?! Really?!' moment. But once, thanks to Facebook, BMM, a suffocatingly small media industry and overzealous Contact Whores, knowing people in common becomes the rule rather than the exception, I'd expect the thrill would wear thin. Not so.

As for me, I've come to dread this particular strain of conversation. EVERYBODY knows EVERYBODY. It used to be that you could just hang with another group to escape hearing the same anecdotes, the same names, the same thoughts. Now you must physically saddle up and ride out of town to find people who haven't heard of you or 'know your second cousin from your Mama's side, what a slut she is!'

I remember my Junior college self and how I longed to be on backslapping terms with everyone. It's funny how you can hate the things you think you want most. Now I just want to stop people when I sense they're about to know someone I know.

'NO.'
'No what?'
'No you don't!'
'No I don't what?'
'No you don't. Want to order the um, platter?'


Life's a clown.

Do you think that maybe?

Our biological clocks are bitterly divorced from our psychological clocks?

If English were a brothel, 'I Love You' would be its most hard-working trick? Costs almost nothing, takes instructions and is dead in the eyes.

Euphemistically speaking, we're all assholes?

Life should keep its lemons and hand you a stiff drink instead?

Billy Joel had the right idea?

Panic is a necessary precursor to the best things to happen to us?

That the power of speech would be more apt in reverse? As you grow and your mind gets more sophisticated (baseless claim, I know) you need words to get you by, less and less?

This blog has run its course?

I do.

I'd like one sense of humour to go, thankyou.

I've lost the funny, I have. I'm just not funny anymore.

I say things and I think "Well, that's not funny. Did you mean it to be funny? Because it's not. It's unfunny and tedious and practised and you should just stop talking."

I am finally that person I have feared I would some day become - A funny sounding person who suspects, and is joined by a great many in this suspicion, that she is not really funny. She falls just short of hitting the spot. Every single time.

I'm actually talking about being unfunny. Now a naturally funny person would not have to talk about being or not. It would just be something she did or didn't do.

If I had a dime for every time I said the word 'funny' here, I would BUY a sense of humour.

You see what I mean? Do you think this is how Russel Peters feels?