Fish in the Drinking Fountain

As you can imagine, I have quite the imagination. This sometimes scares me, and has caused self-induced hallucinations. Like this one time I was little, I had a nightmare. Nightmares in and of themselves are scary when you are little. This one, I had convinced myself that hunters on alligators were stalking the halls of my house, waiting for me to step into their domain. Needless to say, I was absolutely terrified, I couldn’t even call out to my mother who was right across the hall, it would alert the hunters to my position. Finally, I gathered the courage and leaped across the hallway, making it safely into my parents bedroom. The night ended with me crawling into bed with them, and sleeping safely. I never saw those hunters again.

Now, I enjoy imagining things too. Like one of my professors kept repeating the phrase, “Growing Cows”. Now, having weird trains of thought chug through my brain I kept seeing a cows face poking out over a corn-stalk. I even illustrated it in one of my many notebooks. My notebook collect is definitely for a different post.

The only constant for my imagination are the fish in the drinking fountain. Not literally fish in the drinking fountain, but what I associate as fish eyes. Little kids will always tease each other with, “Leave some for the fishes” if one of their peers is taking too long. My imagination took this a little literally, but I enjoyed where it took me. In the drain for the water, sometimes the water will condense and drip down the drain. Of course, I never realized this until a several years later, but at the time it looked like a fish eye, winking up at me. (I see it in the shower sometimes, and I rarely think too much about my own perception when this happens.) I can always hear a little voice calling up to me, “A little water please! I have children to give air to.” Of course I know that fish don’t breathe actual water, they filter the oxygen out, but it is still a rather amusing picture. Don’t you think?

I find myself taking less time at the drinking fountain when I see that winking eye.

 

Solitaire

Possibly the best game ever created is solitaire. Many a times I have gotten out of awkward conversations and boring silences by flipping on my iPod and playing solitaire. It is by far my most played app, none of the others come close, though zombeat does come close. (Something about slaughtering zombies to a beat of awesome music entertains me every time. Especially when the music is decent elevator/rock/jazz songs that make you want to play the game over and over.)

Though going back to solitaire, I must say that I am always disappointed when I get cards with the face value of 2-4 dealt to me as the main set of cards. I could do virtually nothing with these cards, especially when they are all the same color. I have to wait for something of the opposing color to surface from the draw deck, though usually those cards are located underneath the ones already on the field. This makes me angrier than starting a new game and getting all red or black cards, as long as they are higher ranked cards (8’s, 9’s, kings). However, I don’t give up. I try to win the game since my app likes to keep track of how many I win. So far I have won 10 games in a row, and am trying to get that number up. I turned off the keeping score feature and now try to beat my time and moves played. Haven’t been successful just yet, but I am determined.

Awhile back, I was so obsessed with solitaire, that as a bedtime ritual I would play four or five games before going to sleep. I had deluded myself into thinking that if I won majority of the games that I played before going to bed, I would have an awesome nights sleep and excellent next day. Deep down I knew this wasn’t true, but I liked the idea of a virtual card game determining the outcome of my day that I believed it. I know that’s beyond bizarre but it worked for me. I have slowly gone away from worshiping the solitaire god, but I don’t think my addiction is gone just yet. It is still my game of choice when I am waiting for food, class to start, or ignoring my fellow-man. It seems to work better than having headphones in my ears.