I have OCD, which means there’s a lot of clutter-crap in my brain.  Over the past year I’ve started to work on renovating my neurons.  The thing about my OCD is that it’s mostly invisible.  All my rituals are done in my mind.  So you can talk to me and I look normal (socially inept and awkward are my normal).  But in my head I’m envisioning the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds where everyone gets incinerated.  Or turned to dust.  Or whatever the fuck happens.  (Incidentally, my mom believes that the aliens did not die from a virus.  Dakota Fanning’s screaming killed them off.)

Similarly, a lot of my clutter is invisible too.  Well, not all of it.  But lots of stuff is stowed away in closets and boxes and drawers and slow cookers and the microwave.  Just like my OCD.  Deep in the folds of my neurons there’s crap.  Deep in the folds of my pants there’s crap.  Not real crap.  That would be gross and a sign of a very different mental disorder.  So there’s metaphorical crap and literal crap and all kinds of crap flying around.  (Not like monkeys do with their poo, however.)

So I’m cleaning out the crud.  And Freud would probably conclude that I’m anal given all of the crap imagery.  Crap by any other name……

I used to live with this cat.  While growing up he was so sweet.  He would sit in my lap, giving no indication that he wanted to claw me in the eye or eat my entrails.  When he played then he liked toys and games.  He loved it when you threw a ball in the air; then he’d run and catch it.

But then I moved.  Perhaps he’s mad about that.  I think he has PMS.  Plus, there’s other cats to contend with.  He’s the alpha male.  But when I brought my concerns (facial lacerations, deep contusions) to my parents they said, “Oh, he’s just playing.”  And apparently I was doing it wrong.  In order to “play” with the Supreme and Most Magnificent Leader in the known universe (sorry Kimmy, your time has past), you had to let him bite you!  “He just wants to gnaw a little bit,” my mom said.  “On my flesh?”  “That’s the general idea.”

No one demonstrated this technique to me.  I was to learn by trial and error.  I was only told:  Keep your body still.  So I did and he gnawed.  It worked….after a few tries.  When someone attempts to bite your hand, one’s natural human reaction is to pull your hand away.  Quickly!  That left me in pain.  Now I just let him gnaw.  And he doesn’t puncture my skin.  I can’t fathom the depths of his mind.  I don’t speak cat.

At around the same time, I taught in a room where a shoe was left behind.  Just one shoe.  How is this possible?  While I’ve been known to wear two shoes of different styles at the same time, I have never walked around in only one shoe.  Perhaps, I thought, he was (for it was a man’s shoe) missing a leg and only wore the shoe on his prosthetic leg as decoration.  Thus he did not need the shoe.  It fell off without his knowing.

Then there were the glasses.  These were left behind a week or two after the shoe conundrum.  Surely someone would have noticed their missing glasses.  Or maybe he bumped into a wall, knocked himself out, and lost all memory of ever having glasses.  All is probable on a campus where mimes dwell.

Ultimately I concluded that our students put on their costumes in such a hurry that they forgot the mere mortal paraphernalia left behind.  Like Clark Kent they must change quickly…..or the world will stop spinning.

I’m a bit OCD so perhaps I’ve thought about this a teensy bit too much.

Judging by my posts, it should also be obvious that I’m socially inept.  Small talk confounds me.  When anyone asks me how I’m doing (therapist or plumber) I feel like I have to answer honestly.  But they don’t really care about my answer because just as soon as they finish the question they’re already walking the other way.  I don’t do drive by hi.

Responding to emails is also confusing. People send me messages belonging in that gray area I call “do I need to freaking write back?”  There were no direct questions to me.  Of course, it’s implied that the sender wants feedback (or attention).  Or do they?  Sometimes they’ll tell me to say hi to someone – generally someone I know.  Do I write back and say “sure thing”?  And then when I do say hi do I write again saying “they say hi back”?  I sometimes harbor guilt when I don’t pass the hi forward.  But really, isn’t that just something you say?  “Say hi” translates to “I’m pretending to care about your (friend, family, pet, porcupine or giraffe) but I don’t want to go to any great lengths to prove this.”

I think I need therapy.  And how are you?

There’s something scary about Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in German.  In the transition from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to Micky Maus Wunderhaus something odd happens.  Mickey’s upright walking looks like goosestepping and all his little handy helpers salute as he goosesteps by.   Daisy and Minnie wear the cartoon version of “Come f#%k me heels” and Professor Von Drake is a little too into his experiments.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  How does someone who purports to have a Master’s degree know the characters in a cartoon?  I submit that analyzing pop culture is part of my job (and I used the word “purports”; that should give me some academic street cred. And who doesn’t know Mickey Mouse?)  In related news, the Library of Congress is archiving messages from Twitter.  Pop culture is important; THE Library says so.

Now perhaps I’m being unfair in my description of Micky Maus.  In fact, my niece didn’t find any of it troubling.  In retrospect, someone should call CPS to remove my strange imagination.

So I entered the International OCD Foundation’s Dare to Dream contest.  They’re having a conference in October and they asked people to submit their stories.  For some wacky reason I was chosen as a finalist.  But now, American Idol style, the winner will be chosen based on votes.  Bonus points if your name is Seacrest.

Will you vote for me?  My story can be found after you click the Personal Story/Short Fiction link.

I don’t have the kind of campaign money that Romney has, but I can offer cheesecake.

I don’t think I attract weird things so much as notice them.  Actually, I find just about everything weird including the produce section in the grocery store.  Perhaps I get a bit carried away when I make the cucumbers talk to the carrots but that’s neither here nor there.  So when I noticed the homeless guy offering kissing lessons I did not feel my weird karma brought him into my life.  He was, in fact, a master salesman.  His sign was perfectly legible, just large enough to attract passersby, and I didn’t find a single grammatical error within it.  I’m an English teacher; this is news.  On the menu were kissing lessons that could be obtained with or without the homeless guy’s teeth.  I wasn’t bothered about the lessons, but I did wonder how the hell this guy could afford dentures.  Perhaps the social welfare programs are better in Seattle.

At one point I passed an intriguing exhibit which I wouldn’t have noticed had I not been staring at my jacketed body in the window.  While marveling at my coat (you’d do it too if you lived in an oven), I noticed what was on display:  assault rifles made of porcelain.  “This is so cool,” I thought.  It made a great statement about war, and I was ashamed to admit I had never seen it before.  I’m not sure if the pieces on display were by Charles Krafft, but his site deserves a mention.

Then there were the men in skirts.  I don’t know why they were wearing skirts just as I don’t know why trees needed sweaters.  But they were there and they were wearing skirts.  One of them said to me, “You think I’m weird?  You’re wearing a jacket.”  And that explained everything.

When you’re stuck inside a wall, what other recourse do you have but Morse code?  I suppose the person could use their voice, but as that hasn’t occurred, I figure the person lost it.  Things happen when you get yourself stuck in a wall.

Now am I under any obligation to save this person?  I imagine this being as a time traveler who found ways to break through the physical barriers of time (I’m pretty sure the 405 didn’t exist in 1800) but ultimately got stuck.  I don’t know that this person came from 1800, but I know that the landscape of the world changes, whether you go forward or backward in time.  At any rate, back to my question.  No, I don’t have to save this person because this person is smart enough to figure it out solo.  Time travel is, at any rate, much easier than staying away from pronouns.

So here’s the thing – why hasn’t the time traveler left?  That’s simple:  there are mushroom clouds of marijuana smoke wafting down from the apartment above.  The folks up there must form the legalize weed lobby in its entirety.  At the very least, they smoke the equivalent of a country whose GDP rivals Malta, give or take the effects of globalization.  That’s a lot of pot.  Too much pot for the poor time traveler to handle.

I believe indisputable facts have been laid out here and my sanity is not in question.  There is no other possible explanation for the banging on my wall and thus only one question remains:  Is this person a man or a woman?  I’d ask, but I think that’s an invasion of privacy.

Generally speaking I blame the wind.  Nobody ever tells you about the wind in Vegas.  Now I’m telling you:  It’s really windy here.  And in the summer the wind blows HOT air.  My friend Ava likes to say it’s akin to a blow dryer.  Well, this blow dryer scoops up trash and places it in my parents’ yard.  Bits of newspaper, print ads, soda cans, garden gnomes – you name it; the trash is there.

So it’s the wind.  Or so I thought.  One afternoon I saw a mug sitting there.  The wind is strong, so that’s a probable culprit.  But it wasn’t chipped, which would happen on impact.  I shrugged it off until I saw an 8-pound weight.  Now how did that get there?  I thought someone was screwing with us.  On my evening walks with my mom I identified possible suspects.  When we saw another couple walking I said to my mom, “That guy.  His walking.  Does that look like a perp walk to you? Like a man who would hold his head in shame?”  My mom suggested I take more of my nut job pills.

Then there was a couch cushion.  A perfectly good one.  Soft and cuddly.  Or so it seemed from a distance.  Who knows what will be next.  A flat screen TV?  An iguana?  Or just some guy sitting in a camping chair saying, “I’m the trash for the day.”  To which I’d reply, “You do look kind of trashy.”  Then he’d laugh and say, “I suggest you take more of your nut job pills.”