I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

I overheard one of the older ladies at my office taking down an email address over the phone a while ago. She did the best she could with her existing knowledge base.

It reminded me of many, many conversations in which my brother and I were operating in entirely separate universes of understanding.

In middle school, I considered myself to be exceptionally brilliant at interpreting these communication disconnects. As proof of my powers, I pointed to my own masterful understanding of an incident that unfolded in my 6th grade World History class.

Our textbook included little historical fiction introductions to each section as a way to bring students into the moment.

When we got to the chapter on European feudalism, the introduction detailed a ceremony in which a medieval landholder granted a fief to an underling:

“I will be faithful to you and defend you,” the kneeling vassal declared. The lord then placed a clod of earth in the man’s hand. The earth symbolized the vassal’s right to use this land in exchange for his service to the lord.

This story did not help my classmate Annabelle dive into the 12th century. One word in particular tripped her up.

Our history teacher did not pick up on Annabelle’s concerns about the separation of church and state in our classroom. Instead, he gave her a helpful and informative explanation of the historical structures involved.

Personally, I couldn’t wait until we took geometry.

Extra Credit: Email address it would be really annoying to give out over the phone (from McSweeney’s) 

You borrow my brain for 5 seconds and just be like, "Dude! Can't handle it!"

I talk to myself pretty much all the time, even when I miraculously manage to avoid doing it out loud for a while. Occasionally I’m writing or making a grocery list, but often I’m just replaying a loop of the last thing to enter my mind until a new thought happens.

This habit is distracting and psychologically worrisome, but it doesn’t become a problem until I forget I’m in a public place and open my mouth. I’m apt to hold lengthy discussions with myself at the grocery store—it’s a consequence of the fact that, since finishing college, I can no longer do simple arithmetic without speaking out loud.

This process eventually devolves into shouting at various groceries for their myriad infractions.

They never submit to my authority, either. In general, I’ve noticed that the inanimate objects I address have a disheartening tendency not to follow my instruction.

It’s like they aren’t even trying. Somewhere in the midst of the melee, I’ll look up and realize that other people are around as well. Then I get all self conscious.

When they eventually take me away to a little white room with bars on the windows, at least I won’t be lonely.

The Green Shirt

You know the green shirt I wear all the time?

Yeah, that one.

No one asks me about it because they have a premonition the answer will be boring, but if someone did, this is what I would say:

This is an actual shirt I own. It’s a nine-dollar, long-sleeved polo thing. I bought it in college, during a sudden bout of shopping inspired by a wild desire to own shirts that were not free gifts at high school math competitions. This purchase brought my total collection of such shirts up to four, so I pretty much did wear it all the time.

Here is an example:

This picture was taken at a dinner party, about ten minutes before an existential meltdown caused by a malfunctioning waffle maker. I take my evening breakfast foods very seriously.

Luckily, someone was able to turn the failed waffles into very successful pancakes, and the future of humanity was saved.

The next party where I wore the green shirt also featured crushing self doubt. That’s because a friend of mine with dark, shoulder-length hair wore her own long-sleeved, forest green shirt. I kept seeing her through doorways and reflected in appliances.

The trouble was that my brain is defective, and instead of, “Hey, my shirt!” I kept thinking, “Look, I’m over there!”

It was troubling.

So I don’t really wear that item very often any more, in case of further carbohydrate- or doppelganger-related incidents. I do have a green hoodie now, though, so you can picture that if you want.

Odometer, Part II

Remember how last month I was weirdly obsessed with my car's odometer? I kept getting close to seeing awesome numbers like 0987654, missing them by tenths of a mile, and feeling devastated way out of proportion to the actual magnitude of my tribulations.

Well, guess what? I suddenly realized that life is bigger than seven plastic wheels, conquered my need to control pointless minutiae, stopped talking to my car, forgot about palindromes, and haven't looked at the odometer since except to check when I'm next due for an oil change.

Just kidding. That's silly.

What I did instead was realize that even if I did catch sight of a magic number, it would only last a second or two before disappearing forever, and then I would have no purpose in life but to wait for the next one. I needed a way to immortalize these perfect events, so that I could remember forever the day I saw 1234321.

So I started driving everywhere with my camera in my purse, just in case a really cool number came up. It's a good thing I did, because this weekend the digits rolled past 099980, and I switched into Heightened State of Alert mode. After a few more miles, the effort of watching all the dials while simultaneously not crashing into anything became too taxing, and I had to take drastic steps.

It only took fifteen or thirty loops of an empty church parking lot to pull everything together, and just look at the reward for my dedication:

What could be more glorious, you ask? Only THIS:

Now I can start a photo album! One day when I'm old, my descendants will gather eagerly to see pictures of the day Great Grandma's car reached 101010.1 miles, 222.2 of them since the last tank of gas. Then I'll turn the page and show that piece of gum I stepped on that looked just like a question mark, the light through my kitchen window reaching exactly as far as the dishwasher, and the bag of M&Ms with the same number of every color. Finally, I'll regale them with the story of how I learned to rotate my socks to wear all the toes evenly, and they'll head home to bed, exhausted by all the excitement.

Either that or I'll put on slide shows for my 47 cats and ask myself questions in their voices.

Odometer

I got into my car a few days ago and noticed that the odometer looked like this:

YES! In only 9.2 miles—within the course of the day’s commute—all the digits would be lined up in order! For a precious tenth of a mile, I would attain a fleeting taste of obsessive-compulsive nirvana. All I had to do was pay attention until the Great Conjunction came.

Anyone whose heart has never thrilled to see a clock reading 11:11 may as well stop reading here, but it’s up there with seeing a straight flush come together in your poker hand. I’ve spent a lot of time awake in the dark waiting for 12:34 or 3:21, as well as any time that reads the same way upside down or backwards.

I also like to check the page numbers in books to know when I’ve reached the exact middle. If I don’t read the numbers for a while and overshoot, I’ll backtrack to the right page and skim it again for any special import or hidden messages. In elementary school I got into the habit of mentally doubling and halving every page number just in case I was missing something exciting.

The odometer is more urgent than clocks or pages, though, because this sequence of numbers will never come again unless you drive a magic car that can run for more than a million miles, exceed the number of available digits, and start over again at zero.

So on the day in question I started driving, glancing down at the gauge every three seconds for about a mile. Then suddenly I had to change lanes. Then I turned a corner. Then my usual route was closed for construction, and a school crossing guard stopped traffic, and a song I liked came on the radio.

All at once I was in the parking lot at work, checking the dash to see when I should buy gas, and I saw it:

I had let that precious moment slip away, and it was gone forever. How could I forgive myself? How long until the next magical number would come up? Would I miss that one, too?

I feel like I’m betraying my car. It’s as if I’m the mother and he* is a small child who keeps trying to show me fabulous gymnastic feats, but I’m always looking away at the moment he backflips off the monkey bars.

Every time I fail him, he finds something else to show me—how about 0987678? 0987890? 0988888? I missed them all by a few miles. For the last one I even dangled a sheet of paper on the dashboard over the display to remind me to watch carefully during my next drive, but I was still led astray by the senseless frivolity of paying attention to traffic.

Now my only hope of anal-retentive satisfaction is to watch like a hawk for 0989898. In about 24,000 miles I’m going to need a failsafe system for catching 1234567, or my brain will probably implode. Meanwhile, I have to get back to my book, because I’m almost to page 222, which is half of 444, and if you read the last letter in every line it spells out your secret enemy’s Facebook username and password.

A note to parents, roommates, and coworkers: Not everyone who obsesses about this stuff is crazy. At least that’s what the voices tell me.

*Maybe your cars, ships, and trains are all female. Mine has an established personality and can be coaxed or encouraged verbally. He likes a pat on the driver-side front quarter panel. He loves me back. Go define sanity your own way somewhere else.