24 May 2012

a breather (and an explanation for why I might look at you with crazy eyes)

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As you can tell by the title of this post, it’s summer, aka time for me to take a breather. I am so glad to finally be done with junior year, as well as an especially stressful finals week that made me temporarily hate my major (yay for no exams, not yay for six papers instead). If anything, finals were a test of my self-discipline, and I think that I managed fairly well. And it didn’t hurt that I wrote one of my papers outside while tanning with my friends. What matters is that everything got done (early!) and I survived. Thankfully, I can resume my thrilling pantsless lifestyle of the internet, video games, and sporadic naps. 

But, when I do make it out of the house, I often find myself thinking about mind readers, especially when in a large crowd. Not in a creepy, obsessive way. More like, posing hypotheticals if they were to exist. Namely, if one were capable of reading minds, could one “hear” selectively through an active choice, or would people’s thoughts bombard the mindreader to the point where he or she could not discern any admissible information (this question points out a lot of inconsistencies within the True Blood universe, which bothers me)? Or, if the mindreader is, in fact bombarded, do some thoughts come off as louder than others?

After much deliberation, I think that what would stand out to me, if I could hear thoughts, are thoughts that have absolutely nothing to do with what is happening. Of course, this sort of thing happens all the time, as no one can honestly say that they are completely focused on what is around them all the time. But, there have got to be outlandish things that catch the attention of the mindreader.

Which is where the parenthetical section of the title comes into play. When in large crowds, my mind wanders, inevitably landing on something inappropriate (mostly scatological, but often judgmental). Whatever the content, it is something that I should not be thinking about. Once it registers in my brain that my thought is inappropriate, I think, “Well, at least it’s not…” and thus begins a downward spiral of smut and humorous observations (that are only humorous to me). Then, I think about mindreaders, and imagine the horror that a mindreader would feel, hearing about my urge to pull the white hairs out of an unsuspecting lady’s head that just happens to be right in front of me.

This is point when I look around wildly to see if anyone is staring at me with a disapproving glare or a look of bewilderment.

Normally, I would panic at that point, but then I remember that that person is a mindreader, and has therefore heard thoughts that are far worse than mine. Besides, if that person can read minds, there’s not much I can do to combat that.

Oddly enough, after all of that internal monologuing, I am in a position of power. If someone is looking at me weirdly, then I can out that person as a mindreader. If that situation were to arise, I would like to make knowing eye contact, nod, and carry on my way, thinking “I’m onto you.”