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.”
