Idiosyncrasies

Idiosyncrasies are defined in the dictionary as : a characteristic, habit, mannerism, or the like, that is peculiar to an individual or the physical constitution peculiar to an individual or a peculiarity of the physical or the mental constitution, esp. susceptibility toward drugs, food, etc.

so every body's got 'em...

me? I've got more than yer average share....
but one of my biggest I define as my lack of the 'practical joke' gene (I had this conversation with friends the other night and it bears repeating...)

I am so totally unreceptive to anything that can be construed as a practical joke…as a matter of fact…I am so unreceptive that it usually just pisses me off to a point where I become non-communicative bordering on unresponsive in an effort to keep myself out of jail...or at the very least losing friends.

I don't get the need for it. I can't play games, like card games or games on the computer (unless it's by myself) and the games people play amoungst friends and acquaintances baffle me. I don't see the need for it...and I will not partake in it....if ya got a secret...and you want it to stay a secret...
Do
Not
Tell
Me

I can't do it.

Which is why, I guess, my particular brand of truth is so painful. Cos I can't gloss things over, or make nice for niceness sake. Can't do it....missing that gene too.

Once upon a time my ex and I were living in a small town in NW ON. We lived in the country on a lake (sounds idyllic...but it wasn't...well...maybe it was sometimes...but mostly no electricity and no running water...how fucking idyllic can that be long term?) He and his brothers and sisters were all time practical jokers-case in point at one time they'd actually convinced one of the brother's wives that she could bring her hairdryer into the woods when going on hunting parties because she could always plug it into a 'current bush'....

I didn't find that amuzing...the rest of the family rolled on the ground...(on an aside...did you ever wonder why they are called hunting parties? why more people are not killed is beyond me...but I digress...)

The same ex and I were headed to a local faire set up to raise money for the local library...the faire was to be held at the Royal Canadian Legion for 2 reasons...one being that it was the only paved parking lot in town and two being chances were better at getting people to stop by the faire if they had to walk through it to get to the beer parlor. (no small glimpse into life in this particular country community)

As the ex and I pull into the Legion parking lot, I spy one of those cages used to 'buy time in jail for charity'...you know?....3 minutes for a dollar? ( n real life it's a type of bear cage...but it serves a purpose for the faire) I make the fatal error of exclaiming to the ex ...as I'm climbing out of the truck that "I hate those things and if ever anyone put me in one of them I'd gladly do the serious physical bodily harm" He didn't respond and I thought that I'd not been heard...which was just as well.

You will then, of course, understand my surprise when the pretend 'constabulary' show up to lock me up. For 6 hours!

The ex had in fact heard me...he got out of the truck, made a beeline for the beer parlour whereby he and his 5 brothers took up a collection amoungst their friends. So for six hours I sat in the sun in that cage, all the while watching my ex and his brothers and friends toasting me out the window of the beer parlor and get progressively pissulated and listening to the clucking and exclamations of all the other 'wives' in the community about how bad 'those boys' were, (and then patronizing me with) "but boys will be boys you know".

When released from the cage I made my way home...7 miles on a dirt road, on foot, in record time (picture the Tasmanian devil little whirlwind on a dirt road)...so much so that when one of the 'real live' police officers passed me on the road he headed directly to the pub and allowed to the ex that he 'didn't know what he'd done to piss me off this time but I was smokin my way home'

By the time he got home every single thing that man owned was in the yard. Every.Single.Thing.

And when he announced that I couldn't throw him out cos it was his house...I left, but not before attempting to set fire to his bed in the yard....and his truck (One of the first of our many breakups before the final....healthy eh?)

Rather a hardy example...but it well explains how I live with this untenable internal belief that I get to make myself act an ass...but no.one.else.no.how.no.where.never. gets to do it for me....

I'm pretty sure it started when I was a child...prior to discovering that one of my ongoing life 'issues' is dyscalculia....in my family there were periods of time where we got along well enough to have 'family time'....for my parents who both loved to play cards, often that family time involved the playing of cards and in our household that usually meant cribbage.

I never won...and I hated it...and I often got called stupid...because my particular brand of dyscalculia means that I have to put numbers into patterns for them to 'work' in my head....and at an early age I was unable to recognize the patterns in 15/2,15/4,15/6,15/8...all I could see was the need to add numbers to 15 and I couldn't do it....so my eyes would glaze over and I'd get mad....my blister (who was so much younger than I and got it right away) made the error of laughing at my struggles...I tried to feed her the cribbage board....which of course ended my inclusion in any kind of 'family time' thereafter.

As an adult I've been in the position many time to have to struggle with this 'affliction'. As recently as last spring I went to a weekend event with a large group of female friends. Mostly acquaintances, but a couple of truly close friends. Those same friends papered my hotel room with my very own sayings (I mentioned that weekend in a post last April I believe...but I didn't mention the joke)

Now one of these friends even said that they planned it the way they did so as to be able to play the joke on me but because they know I dislike surprises so much they did it in a way for me to make the discovery privately. So I know that people understand that I'm serious when I say...I'm missing that gene....and I know that in the end I appreciated the work....but still...in the dysfunction that is my brain....when I first saw it...I had to sit myself down and breathe to keep myself from going off the deep end in an unfeeling manner with my friends.

I often wonder how my life could have been different....one of my friends who has been married for 25 er so years tells as story about hiding in the closet and uttering "good evening" when her husband would return from a lengthy trip at sea....

I'd have gone to jail
I know it....

again...I say...

My life is...
brief moments of lucidity
liberally inter dispersed with
moments of abject stupidity
and radically altered by
fear and insecurity