I am beginning to wonder if my mind works in strange ways. I’ve always thought I was normal but then my friends tell me that I think about really weird things and that “no one thinks of stuff like that.” For example, at all times, I think about what I would do in an emergency. Like if I’m in an elevator, I wonder what I would do if the cables suddenly snap and I fall 23 floors. If I’m in the ocean, I think how would I handle it if I was being attacked by a shark. Are you supposed to hit its nose, poke its eyes (or is that from the Stooges?), stay perfectly still and play dead, or swim as fast as you fucking can? Or if I’m at a party with a room full of friends, I look around and think who I would eat first if we were in some sort of situation where we had no access of food and people were dying. Everyone always has to have an emergency plan right?

The Boy tells me I think about death more than the normal person. Like when I’m sick with a (terrible!) flu, and he asks how I’m feeling, I tell him, “I’m on my deathbed.” Or when I’m taking a taxi to his apartment at 3:45 AM, I text him to say, “If I’m not there in 20 minutes, the taxi driver has taken me to Mexico to sell my parts. Please alert police.” He says I say that every time I’m in a taxi to his place late at night (not that I go there late at night often). But I ask him what I’m supposed to do? Should I not listen to the hairs that are standing up on my arms (yes, it’s cold but it must also be due to the creepy feeling the driver is giving me)? Is it my fault that I always get a driver who looks at me funny in the rear view mirror? He says I’m being overly dramatic and that I’m like the girl who cried wolf and how is he supposed to know when he really should be worried when I’m always being dramatic. I tell him he should be worried every time.

Another thing is that I’m more afraid when I’m in the suburbs than I am living every day, and walking dark alleys at night, in the city. I visit friends who have large back yards and lots of trees and I look warily through the curtains at night and think that’s a great place for someone to hide out and watch my every move, waiting for the right moment to attack. Or when I went snowshoeing in Utah in broad daylight, huffing and puffing 20 feet behind my friends, I thought some one could snatch me and the girls wouldn’t even notice until it was too late. People always disappear on hiking trails, you know. I’m also more suspicious of people living in the suburbs. I always think they must be up to something. What else are they doing with their free time? And with that two car garage? I thought my friend’s neighbor in Utah looked like a pedophile. He was bald and was extremely cheery. My friend said that’s ridiculous, he has two children. I thought the pedophile on Dexter also had 2 kids. Is he also a pastor, I asked.

While in Utah the girls got on the topic of college and all the frat parties they went to and all the bad things they heard the guys did to other girls. They talked about the night their friend got roofied when they drank the punch. They said they thought it was a little odd that the frat guys drank from a different punch bowl than the one they were serving to the girls. They said they were happy they were in the mood for beers that night. After trading college stories, we all showered, got dressed, and went to a friend’s house for dinner. We were over their house the night before too, drinking and playing pool after a night out at the bars. I said I was glad we got out of there when we did because one of the guys was a “toucher”. The girls asked what I meant by that and I said he seemed like the type of guy who waits till you’re drunk and half asleep and he tries to touch. He fit the profile completely. Shy guy, not too attractive. Total toucher. He’s usually nice and never makes moves on girls but he also never has 5 hot drunk girls back at his place at 2AM. He figures he’s got to at least try. He thinks he equally has no chance with all, none less than the other, so he slowly creeps over to whoever is sitting alone. The girls did agree that he seemed to make his way over to them every time they were sitting alone but they thought he was harmless and still agreed to letting the guys make us dinner the following night. So we were on our way to their house (which I think they torture girls in) and I asked what was for dinner. Eggplants, they said, and I said, ew, I hate eggplants. How can you hate eggplants, they asked me and I said, it’s weird and asked if he was making any other dishes. They said they didn’t know and that it was rude to ask but I said who makes dinner for 7 people and only makes one dish? (Touchers, that’s who, but I didn’t say this out loud).

So we got there and I was hungry and of course dinner wasn’t ready yet but that’s OK because at least we get to watch him cook and see what he puts in to the pot. I’ll admit it did look pretty good but when you’re hungry enough almost anything will look good. Finally, after a few glasses of wine and about a half hour, the food was ready and the guys said ladies first and we made our plates. We poured ourselves more wine (we brought it) and brought our plates in to the living room. We each took a bite and, OK, it was good, but then we thought we should wait for the guys since they did cook it after all so it’s probably polite to wait for them to start eating. So we put our forks down and tried to make small talk so that we wouldn’t think about the food that was in front of us that we wanted to eat. Where did they both go anyway, we asked, and did they have to go right when the food was ready? I told the girls that my instincts are never wrong and I bet they would return and say they’re not that hungry or they’d probably get their food from a different pot than the one we served ourselves from. The girls laughed, but when more time passed and they still didn’t return, it turned in to a nervous chuckle. I told them, just wait, it’s going to be a week from now when we wake up and find ourselves chained to a radiator in the basement. We looked at our plates sitting on the coffee table and decided we were hungry, the food was good, and that we would take the chance. Isn’t this what happens in the movies? The victims just figure they’ll die anyway so they give in?

The guys return just when we finished our last bite and licked our plates clean. Isn’t that perfect timing? I bet they were watching us on video from another room. We asked where they were and they said they walked the dog and smoked a bowl. We asked why they had to go right when the food was ready and they said that was just when they felt they wanted to go. They asked us how we liked the food and we asked if they were going to eat. They said they weren’t hungry and I knew we were going to die. After more prodding (are you sure you don’t want to eat?) they said they weren’t hungry because they had done acid earlier. We asked, who invites someone over for dinner and then does acid before they cook? (Touchers, that’s who). Later, when I told The Boy this story, he said we were lucky they didn’t put crayons in our food. I’ve eaten crayons before and that was the least of my concerns.

But we were still alive after we ate the dinner so we went out to the bars and drank a lot and the girls told me I was worried for no reason. I thought they were letting their guards down too soon. That’s when they get you, just when you think you’re safe. I still believed we were going to die, if not by eggplant then by the touching that was going to be attempted once they fed us enough beers. Luckily for me, I don’t drink beer.