why i am the way i am

January 15, 2009 at 9:31 am (Uncategorized)

Admittedly, i am slightly odd at times. One day, I wondered why. This is what i could think of: 

a) When i was a kid, i fell right on my head while attempting to jump rope. I was knocked out (i think). It really was a blur and i don’t remember lots, just that i wound up in the doctor’s office. Well, i suppose if i really did remember more, that would mean i wasn’t knocked out? I think. This concussion could have seriously impaired the normal cranial faculties that i rightfully had.

b) I have eaten silica gel ball things. Yes, the things that they put in the little bags and label them ‘DO NOT EAT’. I’m pretty sure stuff like that messes with one’s head. I shall succumb to my sloth and copy a whole chunk that i wrote on the crapbag blog:

I NEED HELP!!!

I have just eaten a silica gel ball thing by accident! You know those things that keep the food dry? I really hope i don’t die. It was in my broccoli and i suddenly bit into something crispy. I know it’s the balls because there were two other of the round things in my dish. HOW!! I thought it was salt because we use the seawater salt so it kind of is crispy too and kind of looks like the gell ball things. Oh My Gosh! Help me! I don’t know how many i ate! Just know i love you all very much should something untoward happen to me. I am serious. Really, i’m not joking.

You really have NO IDEA how NOT joking i was.

c) As suggested by Lianglin, i could also be the way i am because i POSSIBLY (really, this is only a hypothesis) consume ant poison by accident. Right, so i’m assuming most people know what ant poison looks like. But for the benefit of those who don’t, they basically look like little breadcrumbs. That’s probably why they work. One sprinkles it on the table and it fools the ants into thinking it’s really food and then they eat it and it’s their last meal? I don’t know. But then again, it might not actually work at all, considering the curious multitude of ants my house is still swarmed with in spite of the poison. Also considering how i eat it and i’m still in the pink of health. God forbid i go to the doctor one day and he tells me i’m rotting inside. Anyway, i probably have eaten the poison before. You know when you eat something so darn good, you just want to savour every little crumb you can get out of it? Kind of like KFC’s finger lickin’ good? Except i’m not exactly crazy about their food. But for other stuff, like macaroons or cupcakes, etc. And you know how you inevitably, although probably not as often as me, drop some crumbs on the countertop and deem it such a waste if you don’t eat it? Yes, that’s what happens to me on an almost daily basis. I think you can see where this is going. I eat near where the poison is sprinkled and drop my most precious and most palatable crumbs. When i finish eating, i spot the crumbs on the table and foolishly go ‘Oh joy!! There’s more!!’. I then proceed to dot my finger on all of the ‘crumbs’ – some of them really being crumbs and others not so edible – and place them in my mouth for what i presume to be safe consumption. There. That’s basically it. Shucks, this is a little gross i realise. I don’t know if after writing this, i will actually stop this ridiculous practice, but i shall endeavour to.

d) Maybe i’m the way i am because of my ear-cleaning habits. After my showers, i usually take Q-tips and dry out my ears because i can’t stand the feeling of water in them. I’m thinking perhaps i stick the Q-tip in too far and it penetrates some natural boundary that’s supposed to protect the inside of your ear? This could be quite probable. I came up with this theory yesterday because i’ve been feeling vertigo a lot of late. So i put my trusty old google-ing skills to good use and googled the causes of vertigo. Lo and behold, a common cause is an inner ear infection. Imagine my shock and horror, especially since my ears have been feeling rather out of sorts lately. I panicked. I went to about 15 pages regarding this inner ear infection. Apparently, there’s this thing in the ear called the labyrinth and it controls your sense of balance. Hence, the vertigo. So this got me thinking. If my Q-tip can penetrate all the way to the labyrinth, i’m sure it must be able to cause some kind of brain damage or upset. Bugger. Wait, the labyrinth IS probably the brain already. Oh right, and if you’re reading this and every time you see the word ‘vertigo’ you think of the U2 song, you’re not alone! Well, it’s either this Q-tip thing or there are little worms living in my ipod headphones and they crawl out into my ears and up into my brain everytime i plug them in. YUCK. I wish i didn’t think of that. Moving swiftly along…

e) I am what i eat. Good grief. Even i can’t believe the stock of food there is in my house. It’s a health freak shangri-la. Where do i even begin? How about with nayonnaise (no that was most definitely not a typo) and peanut butter which separates into a layer of oil and a layer of pure peanut when left long enough? If i haven’t already grumbled to you in person about nayonnaise, here’s what it is. It’s the counterfeit of the real deal: Mayonnaise.  This monstrous mimicry of the authentic sauce is made entirely from soy. Isn’t that just insane? How the hell could one possibly make mayonnaise out of soy? It’s beyond me really. I guess that’s just it. It isn’t mayonnaise. It’s Nayonnaise. The ersatz mayonnaise. I just think the commercial for it would be hilarious. Like you know if you go to the States or the UK, you have the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter margarine? I imagine it would be something along those lines. ‘I can’t believe it’s not mayonnaise!’. Ugh. Thankfully, this farcical bogus creation isn’t nearly as well-known as the margarine. Now on to the peanut butter. The reason it separates into layers is because this special kind i have lacks stabilisers. It’s some chemical they add to it to keep the normal peanut butter from separating. I also eat lots of other weird forgeries of real food, along with wheatgerm and chlorophyll and all that jazz. Maybe all this different stuff i eat makes me different from other people, resulting in the illusion of oddness. Yes it sounds silly, but really, you are what you eat!

f) My shampoo and soap lack sodium lauryl sulphate (i think that’s how you spell it). Aside from the cranberry body shop stuff i use on the sly, my usual shampoo is apricot flavoured, while my body soap is either aloe vera or lavender flavoured. If you didn’t know, which is most likely the case (even i wouldn’t know this if i didn’t share the house with paranoid health freakos), sodium lauryl sulphate is the thing that makes your soap all foamy. And it’s supposedly oncogenic. Don’t get me wrong, i have absolutely no problem with using soaps that are free from this, but i’m just thinking maybe one does need a certain amount of cancer-causing sodium lauryl sulphate to keep one sane.

g) Another incident when i was a kid. During one of those swimming lessons, i was being trained to take the Gold test. I know noone ever sees me swim, but i can in fact, and i used to be pretty good at it, mind you. Well, remember those nonsensical swimming tests during which they make you swim in your jammies and then strip underwater so that voila! you have a bizarre Y-shaped floating device that’s somehow going to save your life when your ship capsizes in the middle of nowhere? Alas, you might not even be wearing your jammies should this unfortunate event befall you! So would i drown if i happened to be wearing a dress? I sure hope not. Actually, it’s almost certain that one would not in fact be wearing pyjamas since who on earth does wear them anymore? (Well, i for one do. But noone else does. I’m odd, remember? That’s the whole point of this post.) Okay, well i was in the process of taking off my PJ top, but the trouble was that it wasn’t the button down kind of jammies. It was the buttonless pull-it-over-your-head jammies. So the top was wet obviously and i attempted to pull it over my head. And it stuck. While plastered over my head. I know, genius. You see, the top was wet and therefore i couldn’t breathe through it. This resulted in my brief suffocation. Thank goodness for the swimming coach who saw this and came to my rescue and pulled the top off of my head. Of course, not before i sustained some brain damage. Lack of oxygen tends to do that, you know. And i evidently did have a lack of it, no matter for how short a moment it lasted.

h) MAYBE I’M NOT THAT ODD. Maybe all of you are the odd ones! Ever thought of that? You could just as well think i’m odd if you were the real odd ones and i were the real not odd one. Make sense? And maybe i just listed all these reasons for nothing, since i’m not so odd after all!

Okay, that was all i could think of to explain my oddness. That was insanely long, now wasn’t it? Well, the whole purpose of this is so that you will know this: Think before you call me odd the next time. It’s really not my fault. I’m a hapless victim of my own circumstances. I can’t help it. Thank you for your kind understanding. And my most sincere congratulations for making it to the end!