Category: Platypus People II

Have Bus, Will Travel

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“Hold on a second, wait, wait, wait, did I just hear you say that you’re choosing to travel by bus?” I asked a fella named Rudy who was speaking to another group of people behind me. I interrupted Rudy. It was rude, but I couldn’t hide my amazement. When I asked him if his decision was based on finances, the fact that he didn’t have a fully functional automobile, or a fear of flying, he said no to all of the above. “Then, I don’t get it. Why would you choose to travel by bus?” I asked.

“I want to see the country,” he said, “and I feel like I’ve never truly seen the country before.” When I mentioned that he could see the country by driving in an automobile, he said, “That pesky chore of having to pay attention to the road gets in the way.” When I said he could take turns driving with his girlfriend, he said, “Long story short, I’ll be traveling alone.”

“Have you ever travelled on a bus before?” I asked him.

“I haven’t,” he said, “and that’s part of the allure for me.”

“Before you purchase a ticket go smell a bus,” I said. “Ask the company if you can have a smellment inside a bus to inhale the interior. Walk around the depot and smell some of its passengers. Have you ever smelled pungent B.O. before? Now imagine that smell crawling all over you for nine hours.

“I jabbed a stick into a bloated, roadside opossum one time, and I could smell the noxious gases that came out of it a week later on my skin, in my hair, and in the clothes I decided to pitch,” I continued. “Even that putrid, eye-watering scent couldn’t prepare me for the smells of the guy who sat in J-4. If we could bottle J-4’s unique combination of gangrene, attic, and a slight touch of what can be huffed on an emu’s undercarriage, after an extensive workout, I think we might make a dent in any overpopulation fears we might have.”

Rudy was listening with an “Okay, but,” look on his face that told me he wasn’t convinced. 

“Trains will make stops, but not at every Podunk town junction. An extended bus ride can make what might be a seven-hour trip into nine hours, which might not seem like much of an addition, unless you’re seated next to the smells of a J-4, and you can’t sleep because you stayed up all night, the night before to sleep the bus trip away.

“We all go a little nutty when we’re sleep deprived, but the nonstop bus stops can mess with your mind, as it might take fifteen to twenty delirious minutes to find sleep, until the next bus stop arrives thirty minutes later, at which point the cycle repeats. Repeat this cycle often enough, and you’ll become intimately familiar with the term hypnagogia. 

“I see it on your face,” I said. “You’ve never heard the term. I didn’t know it either, until I traveled by bus. Put simply, the mind messes with you in the hypnagogic state. I’ve read scientific descriptions that suggest a hypnagogic state can occur anytime in the brief moments we transition to and from sleep. We commonly refer to this brief mental state of moving towards sleep or wakefulness without completing the transition as being half-awake or half-asleep. In my experience, the incredibly surreal hypnagogic hallucinations are most vivid when someone or something abruptly forces us out of sleep. 

“I don’t know about you, but I wake whenever I come to a complete stop, be it after a car ride, bus travel, or anything that puts me in motion,” I added, “I saw most of my fellow passengers sleep through a stop, and I envied/loathed them for that ability. How do you guys escape the laws of nature, I wanted to ask. When I would wake with each stop, my sleep-deprived brain told me that J-4 was getting ready to do something awful to me. This cyclical drama continued for me throughout all the stops the bus made, until I reached a level of delirium where I wasn’t sure if the dead and undead passengers around me were products of my nightmares or participants in it. 

“As I slipped in and out of sleep, I ate, just to do something with my hands. Halfway through, I realized I must be pretty good at eating, because the guy in H-2 leaned up over his seat to watch me do it to a bag of Gardetto’s. I don’t know if this guy was graced with a unique ability to stare his way into dreams, or if he discovered those super powers during our little trip together, but a couple hours into this trip, I was convinced he attained a supernatural form.

“I love the smell of those things,” H-2 informed me. I wasn’t sure what world he said that in, so I gave him the rest of my bag, because I suspected his need for Gardetto’s might lead him to display his ability to alter his ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the way an octopus will to formulate an attack strategy it needs to capture the unique prey it finds.

“I thought conceding might also end the cold war I was having with H-2, until I realized that when I could only smell the Gardetto’s, it only served to increase his powers,” I said. “With the advanced state of delirium I was in, I wasn’t able to tell if I was dreaming or not, but at some point in our travel together he altered into some some form of hybrid that reminded me of a Cyclops in Greek mythology. He had the same face, and the same hands were tossing Gardetto’s back to me in J-3. He fed me in such regular intervals that I came to expect them. When it took him too long to feed me, I cheeped like a baby bird, but he did not regurgitate a Gardetto into my mouth, as I feared he might. He’d just turn around and tossed one back to me. 

“Those cheeps must’ve been aloud, because when I awoke from this half-sleep, half wake state of delirium, the passengers around me were uncomfortably quiet, and a four-to-five-year-old was laughing at me over the headrest. The kid then mimicked those cheeping sounds, while laughing at me, until his mother pulled him back.

“My grievances against bus travel date back to my teen years when my dad forced me to take the city bus to school, but it didn’t dawn on me how deep seeded my bias against bus travel was, until a man named Alex informed me that he wouldn’t walk to a Walgreens with me.

“But it’s right there,” I said, pointing to the establishment.

“I had to walk everywhere I went back when I was poor,” Alex said. “Now that I have money and a car, I don’t want to walk anymore.” I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, and it didn’t dawn on me until later that I have a similar, deep-seeded bias against travel by bus.

“You name the method of traveling a great distance, other than walking or running, and I’ve probably tried it. Check that, I’ve yet to go anywhere by stagecoach or pack mule, but I doubt that they compare to the horrible experience you’ll have on the bus. If I were you, I would seriously reconsider another mode of transportation.”

The Voluntary Visit to the Dentist

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“As nice as you are, I’ve come to realize that you are not my friend,” I informed Ms. Mary, my dental hygienist, after she provided a deep cleaning procedure that involved the sights and sounds of my worst nightmares.

Ms. Mary is an extremely pleasant woman. Some might even go so far to say that with her disposition, she’s the perfect hire for such a position, and she has a voice that would sound perfect for audiobook versions of children’s books. She may have missed her calling, we think as we listen to her. She also has an unusually melodic laugh that makes us smile regardless how much trepidation and fear we feel sitting in her chair.

In a place many of us consider one of the scariest places on Earth, Ms. Mary’s bedside manner (or in this case chair side) puts us completely at ease. She is, indeed, the perfect hire. At some point, however, and we both know that this moment is inevitable, Ms. Mary will twist to the left to get down to business, and her business is not kind, sweet, or endearing. Her business involves something called a Sickle probe, a Scaler, and the most feared dental tools of all, the drill, a dental air drill to be precise. She doesn’t cackle when she picks it up, and no one cues up harrowing music to inform us that the setting is changing. She just quietly turns to gather her tools, while we’re answering one of her polite, sweet questions about our lives, and she returns to start the process. 

Some of Ms. Mary’s tools make the most awful sounds, and some of the others chip away at the plaque and other buildup her patients have so recklessly acquired over the years. They’re all painful. At some point in the process, we inform Ms. Mary that we obviously don’t have enough painkiller, and at another point in the process we know there never will be enough. Ms. Mary appears to do her best to accommodate us, but we know, somewhere deep in our heart, Ms. Mary is an awful person who enjoys this. 

When I tried to assure Ms. Mary that I was just joking when I said ‘you are not my friend,’ she said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. I love my job.” That convinced me that she knew I was joking, but it also led me to wonder if she might be something of a psychopath. She loves doing this to me? She loves doing this to kind, well-meaning people like me so much that she’s been doing it for over ten years? Ms. Mary has such a beautiful portrait of her family up in the corner of her cubicle, and as I said earlier she is so pleasant and seemingly well-centered, and happy that I’m sure I’ll feel different about her tomorrow, so I have to write this today.

I know this is Ms. Mary’s job, and I know someone has to do it, and I know that neglectful clients are almost required to find someone to do this, but I can’t help but suspect that if Ms. Mary enjoys doing such awful things to otherwise pleasant individuals like me, who never do anything to harm anyone, she might have some psychopathic tendencies. If as Diffen.com says, “[Psychopaths] can pretend to be charming and loving, so those around them can’t always detect their lack of empathy,” I suspect Ms. Mary might have some tendencies that remind us of psychopaths. Before we dismiss this idea entirely, I think we should look up the job history of some of our country’s worst psychopathic serial killers to see if we can find some corollaries. My bet is we find one who says:

“I was a dental hygienist for a couple years, and I found it absolutely thrilling, but I realized I needed to inflict more pain after a while. There was a reason that I was attracted to the profession in the first place though.”

No one portrayed the sadistic tendencies of a dentist better than Laurence Olivier in the movie Marathon Man. There was one relatively horrific scene, in this otherwise boring movie, in which Olivier threatens to pull a healthy tooth from his patient without painkillers, unless the patient gives him the information he needs. The reason I consider the horror in this scene relative is that when I’m nowhere near a dentist’s chair, I don’t understand why anyone would consider having a healthy tooth pulled without painkillers so frightening that they would give up state secrets. When Ms. Mary and the dentist liberated me from their office, after about an hour of a level of torture all clients know, however, I recall that movie scene with a shudder.

The scene we’re starring in involves us lying supine, mouth open, and vulnerable to whatever they have planned. In the moment, I know I would’ve talked if Laurence Olivier prodded some sensitive nerves, telling me, “You need to take better care of your teeth.” If he hit those sensitive nerves with the high-pitched sounds of his drill, and I had no painkillers, I suspect I might give up every state secret I know.

Some talk about the high-pitched sounds of a drill with abject horror. This conversation is so common and the need to address the fear is so prevalent that most dentist office’s now provide their clients headphones to drown that sound out. Clients and prospective clients also talk about how much they hate the pain involved, so they take all of the painkillers the dentist has to offer, plus the nitrous oxide. Some potential clients seek dentists who have all of painkillers the state will allow, including putting them to sleep.

Prior to this particular dentist office visit, I informed everyone I knew that I turned down all but the basic painkiller, because I wanted the dentists and their assistants to hurry up and finish whatever procedures they proscribe for the horrors going on in my mouth. A younger, braver me opted to endure the pain to expedite the process. I did not want to wait for the nitrous to take hold. I just wanted them to start, so they could end sooner. Something changed over the years. I don’t know if I psyched myself into a frenzy or what, but when they started drilling, I raised a hand and asked for more painkiller and more time for the nitrous to take hold. I took all the painkillers they had at their disposal this time and the headphones.

***

I’ve heard about the Stockholm syndrome in which the captive begins to develop unusual feelings of trust and affection for their captors. Some of the captives, used in various case examples, develop an emotional attachment to the captors who torture them, and they do so because they become reliant on their captors for survival. At some point in the torture, they slip from being a hostile captive to a cooperative one, and finally to one who unwittingly begins to side with their captors’ cause. Everyone develops coping mechanisms for stressful moments, and while we understand that sitting in a dentists’ chair is not in the same league with all of the various forms of torture known to man, it does give those of us who know nothing of real torture some insight into what we might do when our captors know the right nerves to hit to get us to talk. 

My coping mechanism for dealing with this relatively, low-level stress was writing the article you’re reading right now. I wrote most of this article, in my mind, while Ms. Mary chipped away at my plaque, and I completed it when the dentist finished me off. When Ms. Mary tapped a sensitive nerve, I laughed. I did not laugh because I’m impervious to pain. I laughed because I thought of a great line I wanted to add right here … but I forgot it. Did I forget it, because our mind sweeps out negative memories to keep us happy? Some students of the mind suggest that the mind distills bad memories from our thoughts to keep us happy, in a manner similar to the liver distilling unhealthy products from our body to keep us healthy. I thought not, because the session wasn’t that horrific. I blame it on the drugs Ms. Mary induced. Whatever the case was, I remembered thinking that it was such a great line that I should hurry up and write it down before I forgot it, as I knew that it would get lost in the ether, or to the ether, and I probably should hurry up and write it down. I didn’t write it down, or even say it to Ms. Mary to make it more memorable, because as much as I live for great sentences, I didn’t want to prolong the process for even a minute more.    

I experienced a small window into how I might fare under torture when Ms. Mary drilled into a nerve that was not sufficiently dulled with painkillers. She responded in the manner I hoped she would, but I couldn’t help but think of what I might do if my captors not only didn’t stop when they hit that nerve, but they continued to explore the extent of my pain to get me to do whatever they wanted. We all love to think that we’re the heroic captive type who would never talk, but receiving a drill to a tender, exposed nerve reminds us why we revere those who endured what we cannot even imagine. I thought about how much I might hate the people doing this to me while they were at it, and I thought about how glorious it would be for me when they decided to stop. 

When the dentist finally decided I had enough, I appreciated his mercy so much that I felt grateful. It’s over, I survived, and I appreciated his contributions to my survival. The Stockholm syndrome suggests that the captive might appreciate their captors’ mercy for stopping. Those who study this effect say it doesn’t always happen to captives, but it has obviously happened so often that we’ve developed a term for it. For those who want to understand how this anomaly might happen, try going ten years between dentist visits. When the scraping, grinding, and drilling finding ends, it feels like they’re acting in a merciful, kind, and sympathetic manner, and the euphoria you feel might lead you to inexplicable feelings of affection that you don’t have for people who have never drilled anything into your face for a couple hours.

***

The thing about going to the dentist is it’s voluntary. We don’t have to go. If we want to keep our teeth, and keep them in such good shape that they might last for most of our lives, we must visit the dentist biannually. Some even suggest that a deterioration of our oral hygiene can lead to a decline in our overall health, but  it’s still voluntary. When we don’t visit the dentist’s office regularly, no one will think less of us, because no one will ever know. They might see the degradation of our teeth over time, but few will suspect that it has anything to do with the fact that we haven’t visited a dentist’s office in a while. They just cringe when we smile, and they think less of us, but they likely won’t make the connection. 

My dad had a miracle cure for bad teeth, milk. He thought the calcium in milk helped preserved his teeth so well that he didn’t have to brush, and he would never have to go to a dentist’s office, and he didn’t for most of his life. He thought milk, and the calcium therein, were the miracle cures to maintaining oral health to the point of having his natural teeth into old age. A high school friend of mine never brushed his teeth either, and he never visited the dentist’s office. His miracle cure was Listerine. Both men found the error of their ways during “the most painful experience I’ve ever had” when they eventually found their teeth so painful that a visit to the dentist proved to be the lesser of two evils. 

If they hadn’t volunteered this information, we would’ve never known, because no one lauds a person for responsibly visiting a dentist biannually, and no one talks about a person who doesn’t. “There goes Stewart, he hasn’t visited a dentist’s office in ten years.” I’ve never heard anyone say this, or anything else, about a person regarding the regularity of their dentist visits. There’s no peer pressure, parental pressure, or any other form of pressure, other than internal, to routinely address what could be a problem if we don’t.

“It’s voluntary? You mean I don’t have to subject myself to pain if I don’t want to do so? I have to be self-motivated to subject myself to the pain involved? Even those who regularly visit the dentist responsibly experience some pain in every visit? Who, in their right mind, would do this on a biannual basis?”

“The longer you wait the more painful it will be,” they caution.

“So, the only motivation to endure regular, painful visits, is to stave off the prospect of more pain?”

Most of the rewards for enduring everything Ms. Mary has at her disposal on a biannual basis, to maintain a healthy mouth, are long-term. If we maintain that biannual schedule, it’s possible that we might never experience a toothache, if we proactively follow their prescriptions for greater oral health on a daily basis. Yet, if we never have a toothache, how much do we appreciate it? If there are so few tangible, short-term rewards, what are the long term ones? Well, if we’re lucky enough to live into the 70s, 80s, and beyond, we might be able to luxuriate in the idea that we’re one of the few in the retirement community who still has most, if not all, of our natural teeth, but we’ll have to wait decades to lord that over our peers. When we finally arrive at that glorious day, how will they react? What will be our lifelong reward for having the various dentists and their Ms Marys drilling into our face for an hour, two times a year, for decades? If we’re lucky enough to live that long, we might one day receive nothing more than an unceremonious shrug from that guy who is now forced to wear dentures.

It Wouldn’t be Easy Being Lime Green, but I Would’ve Enjoyed the Ride

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I would’ve loved to live in a lime green world back when it was just me, living single and in apartments, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it off. I know that sounds strange, but completely normal friends of mine have stated that they wished they had the courage to commit suicide. “I really wish I could commit suicide, but we Stanleys have never had the guts to follow through.” I don’t think my flirtation with changing the color of my apartment, even to exotic, lime green tops that, but it’s all relative. 

I never followed through with this formidable flirtation, but I was offered a window into this part of my soul when I pulled up next to an idling, bright and shiny yellow Jeep. I stared too long at that driver, thinking about the courage it took for him to be bright, flashy, and yellow. It was so appealing to me, especially with it’s beautiful black borders contrasting the yellow.

After that intoxication subsides, we realize that the idea that we could be him and pull off such a ride through town is intoxicating, but only in short bursts. Impulsively driving that Jeep off the car lot on a Monday would be just as intoxicating. Somebody else would start giving you the look you’re giving that guy, and you love imaging that. When Thursday rolls around, the reality that you’re a guy who just purchased a bright, yellow Jeep hits, and you realize there’s no turning back. Living in a lime green world was the dream, but like every other dream, they’re only great in short bursts. 

I would’ve loved the process of mixing and matching to try to find the perfect contrast, in short bursts, and I think the sight of the color porpoise grey would’ve ended my search. I would’ve loved the reactions of my friends and family to what they considered a huge mistake.  

“What happened?” they might’ve asked, looking around my apartment with wide eyes.

“What do you mean, I chose this color. I told the apartment complex’s office that I would be painting, but,” and here I might speak in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, as if this was our little secret now. “I didn’t tell them what color.”

What would my guest think of me? Would I have start having some trouble in the dating world? Would decades-old friends begin questioning what they thought they knew about me? Would I still be single, if my future wife saw that I was living in a lime green world?

“I’m sorry,” she would say as I knelt before her with a ring. “You’re a nice guy and all that, but I just can’t get past the whole lime green  thang. And before you say it, I know you can just change the color, but it worries me that you chose that color in the first place.”

Would decades-old friends begin questioning what they thought they knew about me? “We’ve been friends for a long time now, but this …” they would say, looking around. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“So, the friendship is over?”

“No, I’m not saying that, but if you’re going to party here, and you want me to invite my friends, you’re going to have to repaint.”

My apartment could’ve been my own little, personal psychological testing lab, a petri dish that I could use to compile a delicious list of reactions now that I could report to you now.

“There goes Stanley, seems like a nice guy and all, but I hear he lives in a lime green apartment that he painted that way.”

Some psychologists state that lime green might be a mood booster, as it recalls nature and budding love, and it might not have narrowed my world as much as I think.

They also suggest that lime green helps us relax, and it’s useful for people with depression. Most of their conclusions are guesses, of course, as color affects us all in wildly divergent ways, and if there is any effect it is largely subconscious. My best guess is that if color has any effect, it’s negligible. Perhaps the only effect would occur within the four-walled world of the office where people talk. A single man with lime green walls would become the topic of the many conversations otherwise bored people have trying to establish their bona fides through comparative analysis. “He does seem like a nice guy, but did you know that he painted all of his walls lime green? I’m thinking he probably spends too much time alone, thinking strange thoughts. Kind of creepy, right?” That’s probably the reason none of us have the guts to paint our walls such colors.

“Hey, you’re Stanley Roper right?” someone might say, stopping me in the hall. “Is it true you have a lime green apartment?”

“Yeah, the complex told me they were going to paint,” I’d lie, “but I had no idea they were going to go with lime green.”

“Why don’t you move?”

“I still have eight months on my lease.”

Over time, the peer pressure probably would’ve grown so intense that my resolve would wilt. I enjoy it when others perceive that I might be a little weird, but I enjoy proving them wrong too. I enjoy jumping back and forth over that line, in a manner some call the clown nose on, clown nose off effect. I do whatever I can to achieve the clown nose on effect, because I enjoy defying expectations and categorizations, but I do enjoy the luxury of taking that clown nose off when I want others to feel so comfortable around me that they enjoy my company. I’m sure some dagger, like “he probably spends too much time alone, and thinks too much” would lead me to believe that following my irrational but impassioned impulses were a mistake.  

I do love, and I mean love spotting a bright orange truck roll down the highway. That feller’s got a pair on him, I think. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks. I so wish I could be that guy. I think about how liberating it would be to drive down a primary thoroughfare in a bright orange truck with black highlights. Six months to a year in, however, that glory rubs off. I did it in grade school. I wore a shocking pair of bright, baby blue tennis shoes, and I loved the instantaneous reactions I achieved. I was a fella who shocked his world in a pair of bright blue tennis shoes, but I went from being a guy with such shoes  to the guy who wore a shockingly bright blue pair of tennis shoes, and I didn’t enjoy that characterization over the long haul. I tried other things. I tried a shocking, new hairdo. I received all the reactions I wanted and then some. I found that there were days when I wanted to shock my world and others when I didn’t, but once you start shocking your world it doesn’t matter what you want them to think of you tomorrow. You realize that you don’t have the light switch control of the clown nose on, clown nose off effect you thought you did. Their impressions become the impression they have of you. 

***

Most of the websites that discuss the psychological elements of color devote most of their space to the positive, pleasing reactions we have to them. Their reads on the effects of color remind me of descriptions of personality types under the zodiac: mostly positive with a few nuggets of negative information thrown in to make it interesting without offending anyone. I understand that no one wants to promote negative stereotypes of any variety, but some of us are pretty awful, and I think we would all give astrologists a lot more credence if they allowed for that.

“All astrological signs are uniquely wonderful in their own unique ways, except for the Taurus. We’re not going to say all Tauruses are awful, as we’re sure a few of them do some nice things for people, some of the times, but an overwhelming majority of them enjoy watching other people get hurt, and they are prone to lie, cheat and steal if they think that will give them an advantage in life. Most Tauruses are complete pieces of dung.” If a reputable and respected astrological publication put out such a reading, its audience would probably bombard them with letters calling for a retraction. “My aunt Mary Louise is a Taurus, and she is the nicest, sweetest human being on the planet. How dare you suggest that she’s a piece of dung.”

“First of all, sir,” I would reply, as the astrologist of note in our publication, “that’s our reading, and our reading is gospel. Your aunt is probably a piece of dung, and either you’re not willing to admit it, or you don’t know it yet. She’s probably old and done with life now, but when she dies, you’ll probably hear all the piece of dung things she did in her prime. You should also know that there’s no evidence behind anything we write. We just make dung up as we go along, and your suggestion that we rewrite our reading suggests that you know that. We’re just writing dung for dung consumers who believe in such dung. It has no bearing on personalities. If you believe us when we write that you, as an Aries, are a trailblazer with boundless energy then you’re dumber than you look. Furthermore, if our Taurus reading actually offends you, you’re probably not ready for primetime. Thank you for your letter.”

If we’re going to analyze a group of people in anyway, I would suspect that we would arrive at at least a few negatives. Thus, if we are going to create a relatively specious way of analyzing human nature through astrology, their favorite color, or their favorite football team, we should have to create some negatives just to counter-balance all of the positives. Doing so might lend greater credibility to the reading, and establish some level of science to it. It might seem an impossible chore, but I think we would all appreciate the effort.

Some websites do provide some negative attributes, but they’re usually in the bullet points beneath the primary paragraph, and they usually attribute negatives to extremes. There’s nothing wrong with the color orange, they write, but be careful to avoid intense colors of orange, as they can lead to aggression.

“What is going on with the world? Every time I invite someone into my orange living room, they try strangle me. Last week, the meter reader started pointing his meter-reading gun at me, making gun sounds, like a little kid with a toy gun. I thought he was trying to be cute-funny, but he had this menacing look on his face that suggested he meant to cause me real harm. I led him into my mauve kitchen to give him a glass of water, and he calmed saying, “I don’t know what came over me.””  

“Wow,” they say, “and the color of your living room is orange? I thought orange reflected emotion and warmth.”

“Well, I didn’t go with a soft, friendly shade of orange,” I replied. “I went with an intense orange.”

“That’s on you then. Intense colors of orange can lead to acts of aggression.”

If I had the guts to paint my apartment an intense orange or a lime green, thus creating my own little petri dish of an apartment, I might see how profound the affect color can be. I might not see acts of aggression, but how would such colors affect the otherwise mundane conversations I start with them in the foyer? Would their emotions alter in any way based on the color of our ever-changing settings? I’ve witnessed the effect music can have, as I switched from one extreme to another with the volume level at the exact same level. There were at least two occasions when the otherwise banal conversations switched to such an extreme that it was almost comical.

What would be the long-term effect of a bright, loud orange? Would my friends avoid me if they learned about my lime green world? What would my co-workers say if they found out that I decorated my home with nothing but periwinkle home furnishings? Would they eat the food if I served them from a maroon kitchen, and the kitchenware on which it was served was a uniform canary yellow?

“You’re not talking to Stanley anymore, because he served you veal cutlets on a canary yellow plate?”

“You don’t understand, the silverware was canary yellow too,” they would reply. “You didn’t see his feldgrau cabinets, or his cerulean coffee table. Who paints a coffee table cerulean? You don’t know unsettling it all was. You weren’t there.”

I know it sounds odd, and a weird way to waste money, but I would’ve loved to do all this and hire an independent body to interview my apartment guests before and after their brief stay in my apartment. I would love to have intricate and intimate details of how their perceptions of me changed. The final, and perhaps most interesting, interview might be the one the independent interviewer conducted with me.

“Did you achieve everything you wanted to by painting your apartment lime green and purchasing an intensely orange truck?”

“I did,” I would say. “Some people won’t talk to me and others can’t stop talking about me. Now that it’s all over, though, I must admit I regret it, because now I have to live in a lime green house and drive an intense orange car to work. I wanted to be that guy, but I now realize I didn’t want to become that guy, not long term, if that makes sense.”

We might be a rare, endangered species, but some of us enjoy the “clown nose on, clown nose off” world so much that we find it intoxicating. We love to entering a room clown nose on, just to get a reaction. Every other element of our entrance is normal and pedantic, except for the clown nose, and we don’t frame it with an explanation. What would people do? What would they say? How does it affect our relationships with them going forward? Am I so uncomfortable in a normal world that I need to do, say, or be something different to shake up their world to prove their normal world is not so stable anymore? Or, do I relish my ability to take that clown nose off and prove to the world that I am actually quite stable, relatively normal, and thus worthy of entrance into their world? Some of us love the luxury of a clown nose on, clown nose off, because we’re not locked in, or sentenced, to that world of weird. If we were, we would strive to be normal, but we know normal so well that it bores us, and we wish we had the guts to test the boundaries every once in a while to test what’s considered socially acceptable. Someone, somewhere might call us weird, until, clown nose off, they find out how normal we are. That’s a reaction, and it’s interesting, hilarious, and all that, but we don’t test those boundaries, because we want to have friends, girlfriends, a wife, and a normal life. After we achieve that, we appreciate it for what it is, but we still would’ve loved just a little taste of what we could’ve achieved with some lime green walls, if we had the guts to follow through with it.