Getting Goofier All the Time

I’ve become goofier with time, at least when alone. I was kind of nutty when I was 18 and by myself, but I’ve only gotten nuttier in the nine years since. I think it has to do with basically living alone for the last few years. When I was living with a guy, I had a lid on my behavioral absurdities. When I would drop a kernel of popcorn while watching TV, I would immediately reach down and pick it up. I still drop popcorn, but I no longer worry about immediately picking it up. In fact, it might lay there for a few hours or, I'm sorry to say; a few days. I will let dishes build up in the sink, what dishes I use, since I dine mostly on packaged, microwave entrees.

When I first lived alone, I would continue to close the bathroom door when I did my business. Then about a month or so later I realized that I was alone in my apartment and so I would have just as much privacy with the door opened. Now when I have company and feel obliged to close the door, it seems kind of odd.

I have become a “doorknob person”. Doorknobs are used to hang everything. I’ve got some workout gear on my bedroom doorknob, a dorky hiking hat on a closet doorknob, and a hair-drying towel draped over my bathroom doorknob. I once used hangers, towel racks, or hooks for this stuff, that is; until I discovered the doorknob worked just as well and requires less effort.    

When I am alone in my apartment I will talk to myself in what is nearly my regular speaking voice. If I do something remotely noteworthy, like toss a wadded paper towel across the room into the waste basket, I’ll congratulate myself. I’ll say “Nice shot, Katie,” right out loud. On the other hand, when I kicked a table leg, dislocating a toe a few weeks ago, I was very hard on myself. I think there were some expletives involved; loud expletives. Nuttiness. A person can’t talk to themselves like that if someone else is there. The other person would find it highly annoying.

Virtually none of these idiosyncrasies are present when I have company. I am a normal person, or at least a little closer to normal. Fortunately, I am happy to depart from my eccentricities and even raise my level of domestic sanitation for a cohabitating companion... but I still might hang stuff on doorknobs.