I Think Too Much About Everything

Tangents... I admit, I think TOO much about everything! I think about things all day, and well into the night after I should be sleeping. I like to play this game with myself called "how the hell did I get here?" The origination for this game stems from always being asked by others where I got what I came out of left field with.

I will be engaged in a conversation about what suppermarket has NY steaks on sale this week and somehow, a storm of different tangents take a parade route through my thoughts and I end up asking my mom if she has seen her friends Joe and Sherri lately, and if they are doing alright.... my mother is just like me with the tangents so it doesn't phase her one bit... but anyone else within earshot of our conversation would probably poke fun at my random comment and ask me... "Where the hell did that came from?!"...

I usually try not to trace the thoughts out loud because that tends to illicit even more teasing at my expense. However this has become one of my favorite games to play with myself. This particular tangent's roots sprouted from the conversation regarding the sale-war between supermarket stores on sodas, from there the conversation turned to the price of NY steaks, while all other participants of the conversation are talking about the price of meat..........

I started thinking about how weird it is that people put steaks on their face when they get a black-eye, I started wondering about how sanitary that was and how the bacteria of the uncooked meat might have healing properties or maybe it is just so that every inch of the traumatized skin will be touching the cold flesh.

Then I remembered the time my husband went snowboarding with his little brother when we stayed with my parents in a cabin in Tahoe. His brother had run right into a tree and it gave him the worst shinner I had ever seen, then I remembered my old boss and how she used to drive all the way up to Tahoe to go camping on the lake and how, when she told me this, I had asked her if the water is still cold in the summer since Lake Tahoe is supposedly a dormant volcano that filled up with water and is rumored to be very deep, so I thought it might remain cold all year...

That got me thinking about Mt. St. Hellen and how the whole top of it popped off the last time it erupted... then my thouts turned to the fact that my grandma used to have a huge fascination with Mt. St. Hellen and had these weird commemorative plates hanging up in the kitchen, which made me remember the time when I was a kid and my mom made hot chocolate for all the cousins and my two youngest cousins flung their marshmallows at the wall trying to hit the plate and how the marks the marshmallows made are still there and how everytime anyone asks what the other mark right next to it is, my brother tells the story about the morning my mom lost it because someone left a bowl of cereal on the kitchen table and she yelled at us while slamming her fist on the table, sending the bowl flying in the air and getting milk on the ceiling...

I remember that the bowl that was left on the table was a maroon Tupperware bowl and my mom used buy her Tupperware from a woman named Joanne and on the way to my parent's house that day, I saw that the Joanne's fabric store closed... the last time I went into the shopping center that particular Joanne's is in, my husband and I were getting something at the hardware store... which is the last time I saw Joe... but he wasn't with Sherri, so I was curious how the two of them were doing.........

See, isn't that a fun game! But usually I have to travel backward when I play by myself because I am trying to figure out where my tangent began... when someone else asks me to trace my tangent, they usually ask me how I got from point A to point B. In that case it makes me look a lot less crazy when I explain my journey from point A TO point B. And all of these connections that I followed inside my own head, took place as everyone around me discussed the price of steaks! Lol...

Typicalpisces · 41-45, F

I LOVE to read aloud what you write! I always do “air quotes” and give “extreme emphasis” to the things you put in quotations… lol… I read it to anyone who is near me, whether it is my husband or my daughter, who BTW, wants to know what you look like… she thinks that she knows exactly what you look like just from hearing me read a few of your pieces… lol…

You know how you can tell what something tastes like just by smelling it… I am guessing that it works somewhat like that. I don’t think I have that power though, I can visualize with great detail things that people tell me, but I don’t usually get the big picture on my own. For example my daughter has this teacher that she talks about often and I had an idea what she looked like that was all wrong…

What I DID think that she looked like, I could see clear as day, down to the shoes she wears, how she carries her body, or if she wears glasses… I can see every little detail about her they are just inaccurate. Same thing happened when my husband recalled an incident from his childhood. I had heard the story many times before, and since I had never been to where it took place, my mind had always filled in the details itself. Most people call me weird and poke fun at me when I ask questions to verify, in a sense, the details I em<x>bedded… I guess they are right, it is pretty random! My daughter is telling me that she hates that she has this teacher after lunch because when she eats in her classroom, it smells of nothing else for the rest of the day… and I ask her if she wears glasses or if one her pantyhose looks more loose that the other because one of them won’t stay up!

FYI… I have some variations to the tangent game… Sometimes I like to see if the tangents can ever find another path to take that might be able to lead them to the destination… If you think of it in terms of sequential order, the string would start at #1, the destination’s # would depend on how many tangents you have in the particular string. Since the whole string tells you how to get to the destination, you would start with #2. The next tangent in the sting cannot be #3, so it creates an entirely new path, to which you need to try to bring back around to the destination, without using any that you used in the original string… It is like six degrees to Kevin Bacon, only with your own thoughts, not other actors. Playing with someone else would make that variation so much more fun! Because I wouldn’t even be able to take #2 to #3… You are "it" BTW ;-)