Oddities: Mine :)

Umm… I can’t sleep in total darkness. The hopeless claustrophobic that I am, I imagine the walls closing in on me when it’s pitch dark around me, and I start hyperventilating. So I had my Christmas tree with the lights still draped around it till mid-March (yeah, talk about over-zealous festive spirit) after which I traded the tree for a string of colored lights left from Diwali, that are hung diagonally across the wall opposite my bed. The lights have been “programmed” to glow in seven different patterns (please don’t make me describe them)! And each night before I go off to sleep, I have to keep pressing the tiny button attached to it seven times to make sure the lights are simply turned on, and are not doing the crazy disco on me. On unlucky days I wake up suddenly at night to an impromptu disco party provoked by a power cut. I get up, “program” the lights again, and go off to sleep. Just two days ago, ,my grandmother woke me up from sleep at six am by tapping on my window, to break the disco party, because it looked like my room was on fire from outside. Such is my world.

I wake up everyday with a different song being played in my mind. And the first thing I have to do (I don’t have much choice in it) is turn on the iPad, find that song, play it about twenty times so I can get over it, and then move on. So if someday I wake up to Billy Joel, the next day it could be The Black Eyed Peas, or even System Of A Down. I almost pity my dear mother for what I put her through, right from the moment I wake up, day in day out.

I have a song for everything. Everything. So sometimes, mid conversation, I might start singing, just because something someone had said reminded me of a song. I also have this annoying habit of singing without knowing I am singing. They say Leos like the sound of their own voice. I must be the living example of that.

I don’t remember a dreamless night till date. And I remember all my dreams. Don’t make me go into details of my dreams. I could make even Freud start questioning about what kind of contorted thought-processes could conjure up dreams like that.

I get a little compulsive-obsessive about things I am passionate about. So while belly dancing is the craze, I will practically watch all of the videos available in Youtube. If someday it is a Marilyn Monroe quote that catches my attention, I will read her entire history, and dwell on her life story the whole day, and wonder what made her say the things she did. Ah well, you get the drift.

I remember stuff that happened from when I was six years old. Freaky as it sounds, I remember all the smells and sights, as vivid as they happened yesterday. I remember scenes from something that happened in my life long time back; I remember who said what, and who replied what to that. And try as I might, I can’t erase stuff that I wish I didn’t remember.

I cry when I am angry. And when I am happy. I don’t cry when I am sad. When I am sad, I get all restless, and I keep trying to do things without intending to.

Sometimes, when I suddenly realize something about myself, or come up with a “funda” all on my own, or even discover a song I’d never heard before, I make sure everybody around me gets to know about it. Until I do so, I am like a cat on hot bricks; breathless with excitement, and unable to do anything else.

The way I talk on the phone depends on what I am doing. Or maybe its the other way around. If I’m excited, or happy, I’ll pace up and down while talking, flapping my hands as I do so, my eyes wide. I even laugh more easily during those times. When I’m bored, I’ll normally talk with the laptop screen right in front of me, and am easily distracted. Conversations wouldn’t last long that way though, unless of course something interesting comes up, enough to make me stand, at which point I am back to the pacing up and down bit. And woe betide you if you’re talking to me while I’m sitting completely still, because that’s when I am angry. Real angry. I can’t talk with my eyes closed. I’d go off to sleep that ways.

That would do for now I guess. The “odd” person that I am, I might go on endlessly in this note… Saving you from starting to question your own oddities, for now. Hm.