A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

I’m going to continue on the theme of threes, and of little revealing details. Here are three (completely true) eccentric personal traits that tipped me off to a possible career in creative writing:

When I lose contact with someone while chatting via IM or email, I immediately, automatically brainstorm several reasons for the radio silence. And they’re not rational reasons, oh no. I don’t think, “Oh, he must have been pulled away from his computer to deal with work stuff,” or “Oh hey, maybe her Gmail is crashing.” No. I think, “Maybe he was dive-bombed by a giant bird,” or “It’s the Apocalypse. Maybe it hit the States before Australia.”

I am irrationally afraid of the dark, and of milkshakes, and of drains. Respectively, because I’m afraid that ghosts who live in the dark will kill me violently, because I sometimes imagine tiny mice bones floating in my milkshakes, and because I think that tentacles may come out of drains and drag me down into the pipes.

I have a running monologue of songs, poetry, and replayed conversations in my head. All the time, alternating between profound and inane, and often involving scenarios in which I steal laptops to buy plane tickets to fly to Tokyo to become a jazz singer, except I don’t steal and I don’t sing jazz. This turns off only when I’m reading, which is why I love to read, and when I’m writing, which is why I need to write.