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Being paranoid is expensive.
You
might not think it, what with the usual isolation and aversion to leaving the
house, but it’s totally true. Just go ask any one of those “Armageddon prepper”
people who keep getting TV shows on deep cable for some reason.
Retrofitting
SUVs to run on human feces and training your dog how to run a CB radio both
cost a lot of money. A LOT.
Now I’m no prepper. I have no discernible
skills that would be in any way useful should society go belly up. Unless
writing business-to-business newsletters and complaining about things on the
internet plays a bigger role in post-apocalyptic American than I’m forseeing.
So why
prep? I’m the guy at the beginning of the zombie movie who gets hit by a car while
crossing a street as he’s running away from a zombie. You don’t need to prep
for that. You just need to enjoy the ride until that Prius slams into you at a
cool 60 mph.
I’m no
prepper but I am paranoid.
The
other weekend I was putting in some heavy sewing duty on my Halloween costume –
My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way circa The
Black Parade days.
While I
was stitching white stripes on an all-black marching band jacket, I dropped a
small-ish straight pin. Without standing up, I looked around for it, couldn’t
find it. Looked some more, still nothing.
I stood
up, keeping my ears tuned for the sound of metal pinging against hardwood.
Nothing. A soft plop on carpet? Nope. I scanned the ground all around me. Still
no goddamn pin.
It was
gone. To quote the vile Warden from Shawshank,
“it up and vanished like a fart in the wind.”
Like
the Warden, I don’t let go of things very easily. I couldn’t just accept that
it was gone, I had to find it.
Two
friends came over later that night and we all spent the evening playing
videogames on the Wii. Well, my girlfriend and the two friends did that. I had
one eye on the TV and the other scanning the ground for the stray pin.
The
night and my friends came and went, and the pin still hadn’t been found.
Now,
compounding the problem for me was the fact that we have two cats. I couldn’t
get the idea that one of them might eat the pin and die out of my head.
Well, I
did get it out of my head through the help of Nyquil, which I took to combat a
nasty cold. But once the effects wore off Sunday morning, I was back at it.
My
girlfriend and I took the house apart looking for it, vacuumed, shook carpets clean
outside like we were pioneers. Nothing.
Each
day of the week, the dread just kept compounding. The internet was no help.
Basically whenever you look for medical advice online the answer is without
fail “you’re dying and go to the emergency room.” It was nice to see that human
trend continue in the animal world.
I became convinced the three-legged
cat had eaten the pin. Everything he did or didn’t do seemed odd for no reason.
“Why’s he laying on the couch like that? He doesn’t seem to be meowing as much
as usual!”
But I had
no proof. If I took one to the vet I knew I had to take the other one.
Otherwise if the first one was clear, I’d just assume the pin was in the other
one.
On
Thursday, I caved.
I made
an appointment with the more expensive vet in my area – the wait for X-rays at
the other, most cost-effective one – was way too long.
I
bought them in that night and what do you know? No pin.
At a
certain point, I wondered if maybe there had never been a pin at all. Maybe it
was all in my head. That actually seemed reasonable. Otherwise, where did it
go? One of the cats could have eaten it and pooped it out, but I didn’t believe
it.
I came
home, skipped my hockey game that evening and commenced cleaning the house from
the top down for the second time.
Pin. I
found the son of a bitch. On the floor under a Halloween decoration that I somehow
missed moving a week earlier. How it got there, in a completely different room
and under a caldron, I have no idea.
I sat
on the couch clutching the pin like the world’s worst trophy for about 30
minutes or so, just unable to process how happy it was that I could finally get
out of my head and stop driving myself crazy.
The
cost of my paranoia? A touch under $500.
And what
did I have to show for my money? Well, let’s see, I guess there’s peace of
mind. You know, the very same peace of mind that I found for free sitting under
a caldron like 45 minutes later.
At
least if I’d put that money towards a feces-powered car I’d have something to
show for it. Wrong kind of paranoid I guess.
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