I cannot help this, it is a phenomenon of sorts. For me.
Irene is at the door steps. She is knocking. She sent people into a shopping frenzy. Stores ran out of batteries, flashlights, water. They ran out of water.
THEY FUCKIN' RAN OUT OF WATER. I should come back to that some other time.
They also hiked up the prices. I paid $2.59 for a lame 1" candle. J doesn't know yet, she'd throw a fit.
Back to the mass panic.
Things tend to slow down for me in these hectic scenarios. As much as I hate people, I love watching people. Oh, how I hate people.
I am in the supermarket. Shoppers scurry around paying no heed to others' faces. They are on dire scavenger hunts for whatever it is that the store currently doesn't carry any more. Outside, it is a sunny, warm, fading-summer day. It speaks naught of the foreboding of the storm to come. For that, you have to come into this supermarket. Inside, you find a demonstration of the entropy theory with people for matter. That's all we are. Wasted heat.
People push through like a bee hive. They are piled on top of each other. Hearbeats are a-racin'. Breaths grow shorter. My claustrophobia is starting to kick.
I am waiting in the neverending, serpent line now. The back of my knee gets checked by someone's shopping basket, and the stranger is ten feet away by the time he utters the unwilling "Sorry". I absorb the man in front of me and his cart heaping with stuff as I glance up to confirm that this, indeed, is the express lane with twelve items maximum. What appears to be his daughter comes to him and utters something in Korean, all out of which I grasp only "Express!" He looks around beffudled, searching for the mysterious Express sign. I don't believe he still understood it. An old Korean man, in a new Korean market. Irene, you wretched succubus!
I have been significantly desensitized toward disaster and panic. Perhaps it's a number that War pulled on my psyche, perhaps I can tactically predict that I can handle a situation in an instant, but it is simply a disconcerting lack of care, and that's what it is.
Here I get to the intent of this post. There is a dimension of my ego that has gotten its jollies by always purposely inviting chaos into my everyday life. Toyed with risk in most common situations. I am not talking about taking up bungee jumping. I am talking about making your car hydroplane. I am talking about allowing yourself to be down and out. There is an eerily playful aspect to knowing whether you could handle a situation, and how you would handle it. It's like Kramer pushing the gas tank beyond "E".
I am, obviously, not unique in this respect. Men tend to have this quality more than women, as a stereotype.
This, to me, comes confusingly coupled with sheer laziness. I know I am lazy and everyone close to me knows it. My mind is always working to find the optimal shortcut for carrying out a task - try to do it smarter, not harder.
So, you see, it is a vicious cycle. When I've found myself in risky situations, is it because I am lazy or because I am not worried and believe that I can tactically handle that situation? Consequently, with each iteration, does it make me worry even less, because now I have seen the most stress that I could see?
The panic that Irene caused reminds me of that day that I was sitting in the conference room with some colleagues and a manager stormed in, shouting "Someone just fucking flew a plane into World Trade Center", as he wielded the remote control, turning on the News. As the room filled up with people, faces magnetically turned toward that television set. They were all observing the horrors, I was only observing them. Yeah, I love watching people. You could see all five stages of grief pass over their faces like a shadow. No one noticed that I am not looking at the TV. I already made up my mind about what the TV was going to say, the moment I saw the thick, black smoke gushing out of the tower. It wasn't until an hour afterward, that my boss approached me, saying "Hey how was all this for you? You must have seen all this since you've seen war." I explained to him, then, my reaction to all of it. And how I watched him and his open mouth.
Irene does not worry me.
We can still see the statue. The bridge is harder to see. On a good day, you can see for miles. For miles.
Somewhere, out there, Irene is brewing its ploy. Bring it, you bitch!
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