Quote of the 'Week'

"Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all."
Voltaire
Discovering that someone has commented on one of my blogs is such a joyous feeling. Hint, bloody hint!

Saturday 9 October 2010

Me and my issues, eh?

Rejoice, Planet Earth! Look to the skies, and praise the Heavens! For it was Mr Ross Milnes' 18th birthday on Monday! So happy birthday to Mr Ross Milnes for back then.
It's the subsequent birthday party tonight, which should be fun. Sightings of me at any social gathering are rare, and anyone who has seen me outside of school should appreciate how unusual that is. I am a bit of an introvert, admittedly; I enjoy spending my free time by myself, drawing, animating, watching TV, having one of my many Wikipedia sessions (did you know that Lee Mack's real surname is McKillop?) or just sleeping off the many insanely early mornings I have to endure on a school week. All that considered, I think I've developed surprisingly well as a human being - I don't suffer from low social comfortability, like being unable to hold a conversation with someone I don't know very well, and I enjoy the parties and days out that I do attend - but despite this stroke of luck regarding my relative adaptability, I still seem to place my alone time on a higher pedestal than my time with others, and I don't know why.
Well, I have a theory.

Human beings are strangely drawn to patterns. As an English Language student currently studying child language acquisition, this aspect of human nature is something I find rather interesting, as patterns help our brains to make complex information more palatable. Take rhymes, for instance. Children's books are full of rhymes, and it's easy to see why. If one word rhymes with another, the brain doesn't have to remember both words separately; it can remember the whole of one word, and just the different part of the other word. This understanding of similarities between certain things means that our young minds, absorbing information at a frightening rate, can compress all this new-found knowledge so that it doesn't get jumbled up and confused in our brains. Naturally, the more routines the child has in its life, the more organised its mind will be in later life.

Growing up, I lacked consistency. Now, before you picture me as some sort of liquid-y mess in a bowl, with two eyes floating on the surface, I mean 'consistency' in the other sense. I mean 'consistency' in terms of routine; in terms of my life having patterns, repetition, a recognisable sequence of events that I could grasp hold and make use of. I lived in the sleepy village of Scampton for a while, before moving to live with my mum above a noisy pub in Lincoln, after which I returned back to Scampton, to live with my dad again. Then, I moved back into Lincoln, to live with my mum on Burton Road, and then there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between Scampton and Lincoln for a couple of years, before I ended up at Scampton.
Now, this must have been playing havoc with my young mind. For a while, I wasn't sure where my definitive home was; it fluctuated so frequently, it baffled me. I had a bedroom at my godfather's house, also on Burton Road, that served as a sort of half-way house in slightly more organisationally-convoluted scenarios, so I was right royally bewildered. And I'm sure it's taken a toll on my mind - I'm terrible at organising data in my head.
But perhaps this is why I am so 'intelligent', as people hasten to call me. Never, in my younger formative years, did I develop this natural knack for sorting out, and prioritising, information. I can tell you how they get turkeys to go indoors when it rains in America, but ask me where I left my house keys and I will have to stop and mull it over for a moment.

Now, I feel that as a result of all that inconsistency, I fear change. I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive in that I crave routine - I sit in the same seat on the school bus every morning; I eat more or less the same lunch every day; the list goes on. Strangest of all, I have to have the volume on the television at seven, a multiple of seven, or a number three less than seven or a multiple of seven, so it has to be one of the numbers 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 21, 25, 28, 32, 35, etcetera. Is that normal?
So when everyone else hit adolescence and started rebelling, the thought of change concerned me slightly, and as a result I never really rebelled. I don't shout at my parents, I rarely swear, and I do well at school. These are the good points. A bad point, perhaps, is that when faced with an invitation to a party or some other sort of social gathering, I panic. "It's going to destroy my routine," I think to myself. "I'll be lost and bewildered, and my carefully-laid plans, mostly involving sleeping, will be scuppered!"

As a result, with Ross' party in a few hours, I've been incredibly neurotic today. What if something bad happens? What if I dress too casually, or not casually enough? What if? What if?

Deep down, I know I'm going to have a great time, and that I'll come back from it smiling broadly and cherishing the memories. But God knows where I'm going to fit in that cancelled Wikipedia session on Sunday...

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