I am looking up something on the internet. I can’t remember what, but you can guarantee it was going to tell me about someone who’d just died or show me a picture of someone who had just taken off her clothes and straddled a washing machine. In any event, while scanning a search engine result, I come across “The 10 Supposedly Quirky Behaviors of People Who Live Alone” from Psychcentral.com.
My bloggysense goes: “Jackpot!”
Being a single dwelling Hobbit man who sings to his cat and cooks spaghetti sauce in the nude, I figure this was the weekly fodder I need on which to base a fun blog post. But, as I have said to friends, girlfriends and students for many different reasons on countless occasions:
I’m sorry, I was wrong.
This groundbreaking and brave article really shatters the glass walls that hide us single-living lunatics from the rest of normal society. It was published in the New York Times and is titled “The Freedoms and Perils of Living Alone.” Oh, and a warning to readers, below are some suggestive and explicitly dull activities enacted by apparently ‘quirky’ people who live by themselves. Do not continue to read if you are operating a motor vehicle, a razor or a fork.
But it’s time the other half knows how we live.
Listed in this article are such insanely controversial activities as singing Journey songs in the shower and removing only the clothes needed from the dryer, thus making it a makeshift dresser.
Wow. Please, let me take a break. This must be how the first American troops felt walking into Buchenwald. You only read about people dealing with this kind of shock and horror; you never think you’re going to experience it firsthand.
But the insanity doesn’t stop there, my horror-stricken friends.
No, they really toe the line of acceptability by revealing that people who live alone don’t wash the dishes for a while, they wear comfortable, unfashionable clothes and they don’t close the bathroom door when they pee. That’s right! It’s right there on the Internet for everyone to see.
Can you believe that?
But most shocking of all, and if you’re not ready for this you can close your eyes and imagine squirrels frolicking with unicorns: people who live alone sometimes stay up late.
Holy Quaalude Batman, these are the sorts of things you think happen to other people on the Internet. I don’t know what to do with myself. I wake up this morning, have a coffee and all of a sudden I’m vaulted into an article that is the journalistic excitement equivalent to Mulholland Drive.
Are you f*cking kidding me?
I guess my real question is: Who did this person interview, The Golden Girls?
Dressing comfortably? I haven’t worn pants in my house since I had a 36 waist, which was also when I owned a landline phone and thoughts that MILF stood for Man I Love Fruit. I saw a Muumuu in the window of a maternity shop last week and had to jump-start my pride just to get away from the place.
Time of day means nothing for the diet of the lone dweller. Brinner (breakfast for dinner) has become a norm in my house. Sometimes you need some bourbon in your morning coffee. My brother eats day old whoppers for breakfast wearing, right, no pants.
Singing Journey in the shower? OK, granted, you have to be a psychopath to think Journey is acceptable out loud noise, but it’s not quirky. Try singing Johnny Cash songs in French to your neighbor, just to get him back for bathing at midnight and making you get out of your bed to pee. Or telling jokes to your broom in Jack Nicholson’s voice.
Or saying good night to the imaginary ghosts in your flat, you know, just in case…
Having a pet makes you exponentially odder. I sometimes say things to the cat like, “I deserve a drink, it’s been a long day…Oh, shut up!” or “You can stay out here if you want, but I’m going to bed.”
And sometimes, people, you just have to have on porn all day long. Not for the purposes of polishing your nether regions, but just to have it on while you cook, iron and do laundry.
Or maybe I’m just crazy.
Come on, people, we can do better than this! Let’s show the New York Times how to do living alone crazy.
Lone dwellers, what is your oddest quirk?
#1 by Adam Goodfellow on January 17, 2013 - 11:59 am
So many familiar ‘quirks’!
The picture at the top of the page caught my eye. I rarely resist the temptation to brace myself against both side of the kitchen and do an impromptu workout. Clearly, as only the lonely live in places with kitchens small enough to do this, the happily co-habiting will never do this.
I also practise my kung fu. Usually knocking over the clothes-horse that I haven’t got around to putting away yet, even if the last lonely sock on it dried a few days before.
#2 by PJ on January 17, 2013 - 4:39 pm
How about the ability to stay in one place (sofa, in front of computer, bed) for obscene amounts of time without noticing because there is no one to say “Hey, weren’t you sitting in that exact same position before I went to bed?”