{"id":7950,"date":"2010-11-23T12:16:20","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T17:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7950"},"modified":"2010-11-23T12:16:20","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T17:16:20","slug":"im-everywhere-im-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/im-everywhere-im-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"“I’m Everywhere! I’m Everywhere!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“Why do you watch<\/em> this stuff?”<\/p>\n

That was baffled I, speaking to The Missus. She was telling me about a reality-TV show she’s become obsessed with<\/span> fascinated by, called Hoarders<\/em>. If you don’t know the show, here’s the opening paragraph of the current “About” page<\/a> at the official site:<\/p>\n

Each episode of this groundbreaking series follows two different people whose inability to let go of their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of personal disaster. In season three of HOARDERS\u2122, the stakes couldn’t be higher as the people profiled are faced with life-changing consequences including eviction, divorce, demolition of their homes, jail time, loss of their children, and even death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(I can’t bring myself to include a video clip here, but if you poke about on that site you’ll have a pretty good idea what it’s like.)<\/p>\n

The reason for the obsession<\/span> fascination, explained the love of my life, is that she believes us<\/em> to be hoarders, and hence almost certainly — unless we take drastic action! — doomed to trip down the same cluttered, tragicomic path as those featured on the program. The appeal lies in the cautionary tale, not in mere voyeurism.<\/p>\n

(I myself am not so sure. Our stuff doesn’t lie thick on the floor, after all. On only one small room’s door could you fairly hang a sign labeled Et Cetera<\/strong><\/span>. And I’d guess, without a formal inventory, that 95% of all the — limited — clutter is more than fifteen years old. We’re not accumulating new<\/em> stuff. We’re hanging onto scraps of our pasts. Or maybe hoarding begins in this sort of rationalization?)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In college, I took several psychology courses — ostensibly because I had<\/em> to, in order to get a teaching certificate in New Jersey. The actual reason was fascination* with the way the mind works, or anyhow, the way psychologists say it works.<\/p>\n

Among these courses was a semester of Abnormal Psych, dealing with neuroses, obsessions, and compulsions, madnesses and maladjustments, and brain chemistry gone wrong in all kinds of ways. (I took Abnormal Psych in lieu of Adolescent Psych, the usual choice for teachers-to-be. Some might argue that the two courses could share a textbook, ha.) I remember in particular how Larry, the instructor, cautioned us on the first day of class: <\/em><\/p>\n

Everyone who takes this class<\/em> (Larry said) thinks they see themselves in the cases we discuss. Don’t make that mistake. Your <\/em>own psychology is almost certainly <\/em>not abnormal.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(This made me wonder how many times he had introduced the course this way. If many times, well, it hadn’t helped the “everyone” who’d taken it before, had it? Thus I assumed that ignoring his advice and seeing oneself in the case studies must be the norm — and don’t most of us want to be, or at least seem<\/em>, normal? My logic was impeccable even if my self-preservation instinct was not.)<\/p>\n

Let’s extrapolate to reading, particularly fiction:<\/p>\n