I hate it when I start freaking out, when my blood starts to boil and my heart starts to race, and before I can slow my self down, before I can get a grip on reality, it’s too late, I’m already freaking out, the sides of my head are, my temples are pounding, I can’t catch enough breath, I’m already starting to lose it, and I could have stopped it a minute ago maybe, but it’s too late now, so I’ll do a few laps, pace a few times around the living room, slapping myself on the sides of my chest, but it’s not working. And now I’m freaking out even more because it’s not working, so I go to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face, but I catch my reflection in the mirror and I really start freaking out because I don’t remember looking like this. When did I start looking like this? And the cold water was maybe starting to work for a second, but it’s definitely been offset by this person staring back at me in the mirror, so I’ll go to the fridge and pour a glass of water and I try to drink it all in one gulp because I’m seriously losing it here and I start pounding the water and the whole glass is going down all smooth but right at the end I feel like I’m suffocating, so I tilt the glass all the way back to just swallow it all as fast as I can, because I’m almost done, really, but I start to choke just on that last sip of water and I close my mouth to try to contain the rest, but, of course, a little bit of it doesn’t fit and then I do one or two of those choke coughs, and there’s water on my shirt and I finally choke down the rest of the water but now I’m really starting to get excited because I’m automatically gasping for breath, I need all that extra air for all of these extra heartbeats that I’m having in my chest and, how many heartbeats do I have left? Because when it’s all said and done there will have been a finite number, an actual number of heartbeats, maybe nobody will ever know how many, but that number will have existed, here lived Rob G. who had a heart that beat this many times during his life and now I’m really feeling my heart beat and race and I’m starting to count every beat, one, two, three, four, five, six, and – am I wasting my heartbeats my making them go so fast? I’m just trying to stop the automatic counting in my head that’s going even louder than the beating of my heart, wait, no, the beating is, louder, wait, no, now the counting is louder, they’re competing for my attention, they’ve both got it, now they’re competing to be the loudest, and I’m just counting those heartbeats, trying to grab onto maybe just one of them, but they’re going fast, my finite supply running shorter. I think I’ve caught my breath and I’m feeling a little better. I just have to remember to take those deep breaths, maybe I’ve had one too many cups of coffee today, I’ve got that taste in the side of my mouth, that metal taste. I’m pretty hungry, or maybe I’m not hungry, I ate breakfast hours ago, I should be hungry, should I force something down? My stomach’s not feeling great, am I going to freak out again? I don’t think my diet has been all that balanced lately. Or actually maybe it’s been too balanced. Is that a thing? Is that a real problem? I’ve just got to chill out, calm down, focus on those deep, long, deep breaths, so I take a big breath and try to let it out all smooth in one motion, but it’s coming out all jerky, it’s like when you’re pulling the cord on a lawnmower or a snow blower or a chainsaw or a generator and it’s supposed to just pull out smooth but there are these tiny, regular, intermittent little bursts of resistance, and so my breath should come out all swish, all whoosh, all heeeeeshhhh, all, eeeeeeehhhhhh but instead it comes out just like hh, hh, ch, ch, ch, ch, chk, chk, kk, kk, hh, hh, but it’s getting better now and I’m feeling better now and maybe I just need another glass of water or, you know what, maybe I should just go for a run, or maybe I should just go take a nap or lay down or something or, you know what, maybe I should go get something to eat or maybe I should splash some more water in my face or, maybe I’m just freaking out a little, maybe it’s probably just in my head, maybe it’s passing, maybe I’m not freaking out any more, maybe I’m already just chilling out a little, maybe it’s starting to swish out a little more normal now, maybe I just needed to get it out of my system, maybe it’s OK, it’s fine, I’m cooling off I think. I’m totally cool. Totally cool now. Much better. I’m totally much more fine right now, right this second.
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Anybody ever watch Charles in Charge? Anybody remember those weird Chaz episodes?
Whenever somebody on TV takes a hit to the head, it always winds up causing either personality changes or temporary amnesia. I’ve already covered amnesia in an earlier post, so let’s about a personality switch. I wish it were that simple. I wish I could whack myself on the head and take a vacation from the regular me. I could get away with doing all the crazy stuff that I normally wouldn’t be able to get away with, and then right before all of my family and friends would be just about ready to abandon me, to give up on me completely, I could just hit myself again and return to normal. Everyone would let out a huge collective sigh of relief as they welcomed the regular me back to the fold. “Everything is forgiven,” they’d all say, and I’d have to point out that, actually, I never said sorry, because that wasn’t me acting like a huge dick, it was an alternate me with an alternate personality. If anything, I deserve your pity for having gone through such an ordeal. And they’ll agree and apologize for their mistake. And then I’ll say, “Everything is forgiven.”
I remember specifically the whole head-bump/personality-switch thing happening a few times on the classic TV show Charles in Charge. Once or twice a season Charles would get hit in the head with something really heavy and when he woke up, he’d tell everyone that his name was Chaz. “Yo, I’m not Charles, I’m Chaz. Somebody find me a leather jacket,” and he would spike up his hair and act like a huge jerk. The family would fret about how to deal with this new asshole housekeeper, but right before the end of the episode he would hit his head again and turn back into Charles. The first time it happened it was a huge shock to everyone. But in later episodes, sometimes they wouldn’t even do the whole head bump. He’d walk into the kitchen right after the theme song and he’d start talking with his tough guy Brooklyn accent and everyone would look at each other and say, without saying it, “Well, here we go again. Charles must have hit his head and turned into Chaz again.” It was similar to when Urkel used to turn into cool Urkel. It was a way of adding a new character without having to actually hire another actor and go through the whole casting process and filling out working papers and writing him a check and all of that nonsense.
I never really understood these storylines. I guess I really don’t even understand the whole point of the show. Charles was like a member of the family, right? But he wasn’t a member of the family. He was a paid employee of whatever family he was living with at the time. If one of your employees gets in an accident at work, and worse, suffers a head injury, and there’s clearly some mental damage, then isn’t that employee entitled to some serious money? Maybe Charles was working illegally, off the books. I don’t remember any episodes about Charles doing his taxes. I’m doubting there were any working papers.
Come to think of it, the whole situation seems a lot fishier now that I’m actually remembering the nuts and bolts of the show. Didn’t at one point Charles’ family move out, without telling him? And didn’t that family get replaced by another family? And they just kept Charles, like he came with the house or something, like a refrigerator? Was Charles an illegal immigrant? He definitely fits the profile, slightly ethnic looking, working as a housekeeper, just trying to work his way up society’s ladders, earning his education while raising a bunch of over privileged white kids.
I know the show was a comedy, but those Chaz episodes could have gone in a much darker direction. What if he never hit his head at the end of those episodes? What if he was stuck as Chaz forever? At what point would the family be like, all right, there’s clearly something wrong with you and we’re not sure how comfortable we are with you hanging around the house, let alone looking after our family. Listen, there are children in this family, not to mention our highly impressionable teenage girls. Sorry Chaz, you’ve got to go. But where Charles might have understood the logic of that situation, Chaz would have twisted it all out of context. He’d think to himself, these assholes think they’re better than me. Well, you can’t get rid of Chaz that easily. Maybe he’d even start dressing preppy again and telling everyone that he hit his head and is back to normal. “Hey I’m Charles again!” and everyone would be so relieved. But it would still be Chaz. That sociopath would be hiding in plain sight. And little by little he’d gain everyone’s confidence, only to exact a horrifying revenge just when everyone felt really safe. Maybe the family would escape a violent end, but just barely. Maybe Chaz would get caught and go to prison, and right when he got there, some inmate would come up and punch him in the head, and he’d revert back to Charles. And he’d call his family from behind bars, he’d call his friend Buddy Lembeck, but no one would ever answer his calls, they would all go right to the machine, so he’d leave these desperate messages, “Help! You have to help me! There’s been a crazy mistake! They keep calling me Chaz! What’s going on? Why won’t you answer my calls? You don’t know what it’s like in here! Help me!” and the phone would click and the camera would zoom out to the whole family sitting around the answering machine, just having listened to the message in real time, sobbing, choking on their own tears, until the grandpa shakes his head and walks over to the machine and presses a button, and you hear the machine say, “message deleted.”
But that probably wouldn’t be an appropriate storyline for a half-hour sitcom. Still, head trauma is no laughing matter. I’m frankly a little appalled at how the show skirted around and made light of such a serious issue.
Your gun. Your badge.
I want to be a cop so badly, but only so I can break the rules. Nothing crazy, maybe I’d be just a little too overzealous, maybe I’d get to the point where I’d have pissed off one too many of my superiors in an effort to cleanse the city of crime. Crime, justice, yeah, yeah, big words, I know. Really I just want to be a cop so I can eventually get to that point where I’m in my captain’s office and he’s chewing me out for my gung-ho attitude or my devil-may-care lack of respect for protocol. And I’ll say, “But captain!” and I’ll throw my hands in the air, “You don’t understand!” and the captain will just shake his head and say, “Sorry Rob. I need your gun and your badge.” And that’s why I want to be a cop. I really want to see if, with enough reckless behavior, your captain will actually call you into his office and demand your gun and your badge. Just like on TV. That would be so awesome.
I’d try to act all disappointed, like, “come on captain, you can’t do this to me!” but I’d really just be trying not to smile, because I wouldn’t be able to believe that this is actually happening, that police captains actually say that in real life. How did it make such a seamless transition from reality to the screen? Maybe after one too many warnings, a certain officer back in the day is getting reamed out by his captain, and he’s thinking to himself, alright, I’ll just take my lumps and get back to work, when all of the sudden the captain says, “Sorry, but I need your gun and your badge,” but this would have been before it had ever made it to TV, so this cop would have been caught totally off guard. “What do you mean you need my gun and my badge? Don’t you have your own?” and the captain would have had to say to the cop, “Do I really have to spell it out for you?” So the cop hands them over like he’s told, but then he just stands there for a second, even more confused, and the captain finally looks up and says, “What?” and the cop says, “Can I have them back? Are you done looking at them?” And the captain says, “Jesus, I really do have to spell it out for you. You’re done! Off the force! Take a hike!” So that cop gets so depressed, because he never saw it coming, it’s not on any of the cop shows yet. So he goes to nearby cop bar, but he’s not a cop anymore, so he feels like a fraud. He goes home to get wrecked by himself, but he has a revelation and decides to use his own personal turmoil and turn it into creative energy. So he starts writing cop shows, all different types of cop shows. And in every single cop show, the cop takes things a step too far and has to go in for a meeting with the captain. And every time, every show, he writes the same thing, “Your gun and your badge.” And now when cops screw up, they at least have a better idea of what’s coming.
But if I ever get called into the captain’s office, I’ll make sure that I forget either my gun or my badge somewhere back home. So, when asked, I’ll just say, “OK captain, here’s my badge, but I lost my gun. I have no idea where it is. Sorry. I meant to tell you earlier, but I was afraid I was going to get in trouble.” And the captain will be so pissed off, but what is he going to do, fire me again? I’m sure there will be some extra paperwork to fill out, but at least I won’t lose my gun. And that’s when, in TV anyway, and I’m assuming in real life also, because the stuff on TV has to come from somewhere, things always start heading in the right direction. Finally unburdened by the limits of policeman bureaucracy, a former cop is free to finish the case that got him kicked off the force in the first place. And after I prove everyone wrong, I’ll be welcomed back to the precinct with my old job, and a promotion, and brand new badge and gun. So now I’ll have two guns.
It must be the greatest day of an officer’s life when he or she gets elevated to the rank of captain. Is there a captain’s training program? At what point do these new captains get filled in on the essentials of the whole “I need your gun and your badge” protocol? It can’t be as simple as just calling someone into your office. If I were a captain, I would have to be physically restrained from exercising this power on a daily basis. My whole precinct would be out of cops after maybe a month. And I’d keep sending requests to the commissioner, calling him up, “Hey commish! I’m telling you I need more cops! Send them over quick!” And maybe the commissioner would send a couple more cops, but after a while he’d get pretty suspicious. There would be a knock at my door. Thinking it would be the new cops the commissioner sent over, I’d stand there with my hand out, ready to immediately ask one of them for their badge and gun, you know, to set an example for the other new cops. But these wouldn’t be cops, they’d be from Internal Affairs. They’d be asking me why I’m firing so many cops. I’d be surprised and wouldn’t know how to respond. My answers would contradict each other. Finally they’d remove me from the building and start searching my office. And they’d look in my desk. They’d open the drawers. They’d look in the closet. And they’d find gun after gun after gun and badge after badge after badge.
I’ve got nothing to say
Sometimes when I can’t think of anything to write about, I’ll try to sort of just punch my way out of it. I’ll give myself a ridiculously small time limit to get something on paper. Or sometimes I’ll have a lot of time, but I’ll waste the majority of it not being able to come up with anything to write about. And then I’ll only have like twenty minutes left. And all of the sudden I really feel the pressure to get something down. So I’ll just write. That’s what I’m doing right now. I think I already wrote about this like a week ago.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes when my brain is feeling the clock ticking, it’ll just spit something out. And I’ll be typing furiously. If you could do a close up shot of just my eyes, with my eyes at the bottom of the screen, and in the middle of the screen there are my eyebrows, you’d see my brow furrowed in a panicked sort of forced concentration. There would be drops of perspiration just about to fall onto my nose. Focus doesn’t usually come naturally to me. Every once in a while I’ll be talking to someone at work, and I’ll just kind of be on autopilot, nodding my head yes and no at all the right places. But then maybe there will be too long of a pause, and I’ll realize maybe I was asked a question. And the person will say, “Are you paying attention?” and then I have to act all offended and mildly pissed off. “Of course I was paying attention! How dare you!” but I probably wouldn’t have been paying any attention at all.
My brain only agrees to really think about something if there’s an outside force really telling it to. Like a ticking clock. Like I just said like twice already. Nothing gets my attention like the fear of running out of time. Rewards and treats also seem to do the trick. But since I’m usually the one rewarding myself, my brain will more often than not bypass the system, reasoning that there’s really nothing preventing me from rewarding myself even though I haven’t completed the task I set out to finish to earn the reward. Because, I mean the whole task reward thing is arbitrary. And then I’ll be sitting there, rewarded, but still with work to do. And for some reason I’m always ready for a nap after a reward.
But sometimes it does work and I’ll write something that surprises me, not necessarily because it’s good, but because it came from somewhere within me and I really didn’t even pay attention to where the topic came from or where the ideas flowed from or how I even managed to get out a whole page of text at all. And I’ll just sit there, arms folded, patting myself on the back for a job well done. I think.
But a lot of the time when I force something out I’ll look back and cringe in embarrassment. Am I really capable of writing such garbage? One memorable example: I started writing this nonsense post about a month ago about how I had a dream where I was skiing and I got lost and I don’t even know where I wanted to go with it. I was just hoping that if I kept pulling stuff out of my ass, something would wind up being funny. But it wasn’t funny at all. Or even remotely interesting. I just finished it and put it away for a while. And when it was time to edit it and put it on the blog I got physically sick. It was terrible. I’m rereading what I’m writing right now and even this paragraph is terrible, and I think it’s just from association, just by mentioning that shitty dream story that didn’t go anywhere.
And sometimes I’ll be so starved for ideas that I’ll just write about how empty my mind is, how I can’t come up with anything. And I just say to myself, just get a page done, just one, and then at least you’ll have it done. And I’ll think, I’ll never put this up. It’s so boring. Who the hell wants to read about me talking about how I can’t think of anything to write about? How many more times am I going to put everyone through this?
Hey everybody, I’m getting a motorcycle
I really think I’m going to get a motorcycle this summer. I’ve always imagined myself as the leader of a motorcycle gang. We’ll be called the Flaming Skull Heads. Either that or the Leather Jackets. Or the Biker Boys. No way, we won’t be boys, we’ll be men. The Motorcycle Men, that’s it. It’ll be equal opportunity, of course, applications available to both genders. I just won’t let any women in. I’ll claim that it’s just a coincidence that it’s all dudes. Every day I’m going get up and deck myself out in leather and chains. I’m going to grow a huge handlebar mustache. I’ll keep an even bigger chain to use as a weapon, because you don’t need to get a permit for a giant chain, and it’s technically not a weapon until I start using it like a weapon.
This gang is going to be huge, but I’m only going to let my most trusted biker friends in my inner circle. And even though I’ll have a great relationship with my boys, I’ll always be a little worried that one or more of them might get it in his head that he could do a better job leading the gang than I can. Obviously this won’t be true, but the unquenchable thirst for power is the same in everybody. I’ll have to keep my friends close, but I’ll have to keep them distant from each other. So I’ll be constantly telling one of them that everyone else is talking about him behind his back. I’ll make inner circles within the inner circle. And I’ll make an even inner inner circle where it’s just me, and it won’t even be a circle at that point, it’ll just be a single dot. I’ll be the inner dot. And I’ll do that and drive it home to every one of my boys, so they’ll only trust me and nobody else.
I’m going to learn so many motorcycle tricks. I’ll do all the classics: wheelies, screechies, no-hands, ghost-riding. But I’m also going to invent some of my own tricks. Like one of my new tricks is going to be me riding just a sidecar as it’s own standalone vehicle. It’ll look so crazy that people won’t believe it. I’m going to invent another trick where I’m riding the motorcycle but I’m sitting backwards instead of forwards. I’m also going to do that snowmobile trick where you start out on land, during the summer, and drive across a lake. But I’m going to do it on my motorcycle. I’m going to be the first person to ride a motorcycle up to Mount Everest. I’m going to send out April Fool’s Day postcards to all my boys of a photo where I’m carrying the motorcycle on my back, like it’s riding me.
When I buy my motorcycle, I’m sure the salesman is going to try and rope me into buying some sort of Triple-A protection plan. But I’m not going to fall for it. That stuff is always such a scam. Maybe it makes sense for cars, but if your motorcycle breaks down, you can just walk it home. One time I called up Triple-A when my car got stuck in a ditch somewhere. But I never did buy that Triple-A membership. So when the tow truck came and the guy asked to see my membership card, I just said, “What membership card? What are you talking about? Triple-A? I didn’t call any Triple-A.” but the guy already made the trip out here, so I asked if he could just do me a solid. He said fine, but only if I signed up for Triple-A right there, on the spot. So I said sure, but I instead of writing out my information, I wrote down all this information for a deli down the block from where I live. And where it said to fill out the credit card info, I just made up a bunch of random numbers. I had the tow truck bring the car and me to a different town, so the driver wouldn’t be able to track me down once he got back to the office and ran all of the fake info through his credit card machine. I thought I was in the clear, but after the tow-truck left, I realized that I had no way of getting back to my place in my town. I thought about calling Triple-A again, but I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice in one night. I guess I didn’t really think it through. Also, I forgot about my license plates, because the tow truck guy must have written them down, because I keep getting bills in the mail from Triple-A.
That’s why I’m done with cars. On to motorcycles. I heard that motorcycle insurance is so cheap. If it’s that cheap, why should I even pay for it in the first place? I only like to buy expensive stuff. Anything that’s too inexpensive, I either refuse to buy, or I’ll make a counteroffer to the seller that’s much more expensive that the listing price. No way I’m spending money on motorcycle insurance. If I get into a motorcycle accident with a car, why should I have to pay anything anyway? Chances are, I’ll be the one sustaining the real damage. Plus, motorcycles have the right of way anyway. Everyone knows that.