Almost-Perfect Strangers

In attempting to recuperate from the accident, I ended up just laying around for most of Sunday. This gave me an excuse to finally read the book Sloppy Firsts. My friend Kate recommended it, saying that the main character reminded her of me. So I bought it back before NaNoWriMo began, and it's been sitting on my kitchen table (a.k.a. desk) waiting for me to crack the spine. So I did. And I loved it.

The main character is a high-schooler with a great affinity for playing with language, a cavalcade of hopeless Mr. Maybes on the fringes of her life, and a lot of confusion on how to handle most forms of socialization. I wonder why Kate compared me to her...

If you're wondering what accident I was just talking about, then please go back and read my previous entry, Autobiographical Autopsy.

Seriously, stop reading this and go read that. Now. I command you. (Please?)

Have you read it? Okay, good.

I ended up with delayed reaction injuries. Even though I spent the day taking it easy, I was more sore on Monday than I had been on Sunday (how is that even possible?). First my knee hurt. Next my neck hurt. Then my all-of-me hurt. I had to stop dancing as I type at work because it's too painful. Most unfortunate.

When I got to work on Monday, I sat down and started doing tasks. I was in pain, but I saw no reason to call in sick. As one of my ex-boyfriends used to say, "playing hurt is heroic; playing injured is stupid." I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that. I think he meant that if you were hurt but you kept doing what you had to do, that was brave and noble. But if you were seriously injured and ignoring it (particularly if you were putting yourself and/or others in a bad situation because of it), then you had no business doing what you were doing. Well, no one at my job is going to be affected by me typing without being able to turn my head. And I didn't think that sitting all day was going to exacerbate and of my physical problems. So I played hurt. (Saying that last sentence aloud makes it sound like I was "faking sick" or something, but I assure you, my pain is real.)

I told my boss a couple hours into work about the accident (I was a little late, so I explained that I had been moving slower in my morning routine and walking more cautiously than usual over the ice. And I showed her the police report so she wouldn't think I was just making up excuses... people assume that you lie a lot when they know you're an actor). She then told a coworker, who then approached me about it in front of another coworker... It didn't take long for everyone in my department to find out.

As it turns out, that's a really great story to tell (that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger... or makes a damn fine story). And I do love going into Story-Mode. Even though the work version is sort of a mild form, it still makes me feel like a proper entertainer. I do love having the floor.

At lunch, I told the story to a fellow, Ben, who works in another department. I've actually mentioned Ben a couple of times in this blog, although not by name. He was the "friendly chap" at the L in Pantslessness & Delayed Goodbyes (mentioned briefly at the end of paragraph 5) and the guy from #38 in Happenstance? Fire? Skidoo!.

Ben seemed very sympathetic asked if there was anything he could do (to help distract me from pain or something, I guess). I told him that he could dance at his desk and help fill the company's dancing quotient, as I would be unable to.

Instead, he showed up at my desk about an hour later with a gift, saying, "I thought of something I could do... Sick people eat pudding, right?"

In case you can't read it, he affixed the words "Colonel Ben's" over where the "Hunts" label normally is. And that's a picture of him in his Halloween costume on the right, with a speech bubble saying "I KNOW pudding." It might be the funniest gift I've ever gotten (well, either this, or that time that my friend Phil and I bought each other copies of Britney Spears "Oops! I Did It Again!" album so that we could tell everyone that we got them as gag gifts, when the truth was that we were just too embarrassed to buy them for ourselves). Amazing. And totally cheered me up back into my normal self (as I've said before, my nickname around the office is "Sunshine").

Isn't it delightful when people you don't know very well can have a positive effect on your day?

There's another of those, of course. A male stranger, almost-perfect in my mind, who occasionally leaps into my brain (although not into my life): the guy I keep casting in my novel (please see #58 in Camouflaged Delusional Insanity).

I think he may have read this blog... I shouldn't say this, in case he reads it again, but I'm going to anyway. I can look at IP addresses from one of my counter-site-thingies, and there was one that I had good reason to believe may have been him. And he (or whomever it was) stopped reading (either that, or he has a new IP address... which is possible. Mine seems to change about once a month, and then I have to go to the trouble of figuring out what it is and blocking it again so that my hits won't be tracked). Anyway, that's a little upsetting. I probably said something off-putting (or he made the connection that the person I mentioned may have been him, and he freaked out). Anyway. I don't know if it was him to begin with, but I liked the idea that it was. Made me all giddy when I saw that IP address show up. (Have I mentioned that I'm a delusional loser? A "deluser", perhaps?).

Daydreaming that the IP address was his is just another example of a mistake I make over and over again: seeing things as I want them to be instead of as they are. Particularly with people. A former friend of mine used to take advantage of my kindness a great deal. I eventually realized that about her, but whenever I see her, I find it happening again. I see her as the type of friend she should be, and not the type she is. And there was occasion in which I thought that a guy and I were in some sort of quasi-relationship, but I think in retrospect that I may have just wanted us to be.

And therein lies my addiction to finding almost-perfect strangers in my life. There's something wonderful about people existing on the edges of your universe. So experimental. So malleable. If you know a few things about them, you can fill in the rest however you like. And then you can begin to adore the character you've built up inside the shell of a person that you've met (ah, the joys of non-sexual crushes). I like filling in the blanks with my imagination. Reality is never as appealing.

Another angle of why I enjoy these figures so well only occurs when the crush is not entirely non-sexual: the thrill of the chase. It's such a sexy little game. Not that I'm really a game-playing type of girl, I just mean the act of circling the table, wondering who will pounce first... or if either of you ever will. That will-we/won't-we tension is beautiful. It's intriguing. It's fascinating. (It's the reason people watched the first two seasons of The Office.) And it's so much fun to be involved in. In fact, there's part of me that prefers it to an actual relationship. I love the stage of fancying. The special place in which you're interested, but not infatuated or crushed. Where you'll gladly flirt, but you won't be completely heart-broken if nothing ever moves forward.

Even when everything is purely platonic, it's nice to have a friend to idealize or idolize. Almost-perfect strangers are ideal for that (pudding is just a bonus).

Well, I've rambled enough for tonight.

May you appreciate the almost-perfect strangers in your life.

Much love,

~A~