I'd Go The Whole Wide World, I'd Go The Whole Wide World, Just To Find Her

--"Whole Wide World", Wreckless Eric

I was talking to Brandy today about the whole reason why I was in Florida was because I had grown obsessed with the Disney Channel. Shows like MMC and especially Avonlea had taken up a huge chunk of my brain matter in those days and, rather than try to divert my attention with other activities, I thought the healthiest solution would be to visit the belly of the beast. Something about going to where they were responsible for creating some of the magic that filled my afternoons put me at ease. Granted, it wasn't meeting Sarah Polley or getting to ask the Mouseketeers a question as a part of the live studio audience, but it was something actually visiting the Disney Channel Studios and seeing the set where they filmed some of their shows.

I've always been an obsessive individual. When I was younger, I didn't just take a passing interest in entertainment or culture. I invested myself in learning everything I could about a particular subject, whether that subject be a particular show, piece of history, country, and especially if it were a person. The part of my brain that regulates how fanatical a person gets went wholly missing when they put me together. It may have been lost when they tossed out my sense of smell, who knows? All I can ascertain is that it's not normal to watch two hours, equal to two episodes, of Avonlea every night for three years. Come sickness or vacation, loneliness or company, or even, in one case, the total breakdown of all VCRs in the household--I would not be denied. It's not normal to divert one's every essay in high school onto the topic of Canada simply because the aforementioned show was set in Canada. Nor is it normal to start subscribing to Maclean's on the silly reason that it was the Canadian equivalent to Time or Newsweek. It's not normal to want to do things in eights because back in the Fourth Grade someone commented that one had a predeliction to do things in eights--cut my pancakes into eight slices, leave an eighth of egg yolk runny when I was making scrambled eggs, &c...--leading to behavior such as setting the microwave to 1:07 or 3:32 because the digits add up to eight.

Nor is it normal, as I was telling Miss Carly today, to tell everyone at one's high school that one knew Jenny Lewis. Indeed, it is even less normal to walk around saying I attended her fifteenth birthday party and that I was as close as one could be to celebrity without actually being friends.

I've tried to explain to myself why my behavior was formed thusly. I've tried to figure out the root cause of this personality quirk. I still have a clue why I tend to get more obsessed about something when someone else may merely take a fancy to it. Basically, the only thing I have pieced together is that I have a rather strange aversion to doing things the normal way. Like Rachel said once, I won't be labeled as average. This has led me to have non-existent mores when it comes to being considered strange, weird, or even kooky. Such nomenclatures don't phase me as they would anyone else. Consequently, I tend to engage in activities and pursuits that average people would be too embarrassed or too guilt-ridden to engage in. Some people are born without a sense of fear, I was born without a sense of common sense. Simply, I like something so I tend to try and make the thing second nature to me, damn what everyone else thinks.

But I'm not the only one. I think everyone who has gotten lost in a vendetta, a quest, a pursuit of an unreachable point of being, loses, even if only for a moment, the voice of sanity telling him or her to turn back. Attempting to own that small portion of the universe by learning about it, studying it, even stalking it is not the rational manner in which most people live. It's a very irrational act. It's the act of someone who has a goal in mind and doesn't mind breaking the rules of convention to achieve it. But neither is it the act of desperation. I never lost sight that I was going overboard. I was never deluded into believing that it was somehow okay to be entranced like I was for my whole life. I knew my enamoration of a show long ago cancelled would fade. I knew my crush on that bewitching redhead would ebb away once I got involved with objects of my affection who actually knew my name. And, yes, somewhere in the back of my head, I always retained the nagging question that, yes, I loved Canada, but did it ever love me back?

Eventually all one-sided love affairs, no matter how all-encompassing they may be, come to a close.


Why am I hanging around in the rain out here
Trying to pick up a girl
Why are my eyes filling up with these lonely tears
When there're girls all over the world

Now the only obsessions, if you can call them that, I still retain are the ones where I never received that closure. I still fawn over people that I'll never find out the answers to questions I forgot to ask them. I still wonder what I'd say if I could have one more visit with people like Tara and Heidi, who I cut out of my life rather unceremoniously. Those two I still haven't been able to locate anything about. I still picture if I could meet Rachel. And I still hold a candle for a girl named Jackie who I never quite knew enough about.

I still contemplate the road not taken when I chose USC over NYU.

I still judge my decision to visit that clinic with DeAnn sometimes.

But do I ever go full board into Scooby-Doo research mode? Do I still take time out of my day to visit the library to learn facts and figures about some new country? Do I ever watch the same show over and over again ad nauseum? Probably not.

I don't obsess about finding out about stars, shows, or factoids. These days the only obsessions I possess are the ones that involve finding out who I was and who I want to be.

(and Calvin and Hobbes...)

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers