Chapter 53
The Mental Vortex

Is it just my sister’s fiancé or do all boys…sorry, guys, stop progressing at the age of 13? Or younger even. Is having a guy on a car trip the equivalent of having a child along for the ride? Can we say annoying? And do they then only become bearable to the women who love them? Is it adorable to them? Because it sure is annoying to me! And people wonder why I don’t really care to get married…I personally don’t want someone who is going to tick me off three or four times in a day, and that’s only counting the times that they intentionally try to aggravate you. It’s just constant talking, and not even steady or coherent. It’s, “oh look at that car, that’s a nice...oh look at that field, it’s flooded.” I swear, he has A.D.D. Now I know that not all guys are like this, that would be stereotyping or over generalizing, those are bad things or so I have been told. But for me, the best part of the trip was when our male companion was fast asleep.
But it has been brought to my attention before, and by a male no less, that if a guy thought something was funny when he was 13, then he will always think it is funny, whereas, girls tend to grow out of these, it’s where the concept of “going through a phase” came from. Boys don’t go through phases after the age of 13; they just reach a dead end, an area of mentality with no outlet. So therefore, every girl has her choice of 13 year olds walking around in bodies of all different ages. Thinking of this concept that my male friend shared with me, I look at interactions with a lot of guys that would never be on my list of candidates for possible boyfriends. These boys really are young adolescents trapped in the bodies of men. What a waste. This mentality that they have been stuck with, imprisoned with, is what leads to those awkward moments that you can have with them. The guys who will say something that to them is one of the funniest, let’s not forget perverted, thing that they can say and they are holding back from laughing while you are sitting there wondering if they took special ed classes when they were younger. I was once asked if I like to go fishing by a guy at work while I was in high school, while our thirty-something year old coworker was standing not too far off. Almost as soon as the kid got the question out both started to laugh like a pair of idiots. I was left there not sure what they were talking about but getting the feeling that whatever it was had to be perverted and I didn’t want to know, besides that there is the fact that this thirty-something year old coworker would always ask me and every other girl at work how our sex lives were. It’s a conversation stopper, of course being a boy usually is.
So, I’m going to Michigan, and I must admit it felt like I was leaving Virginia for another school year. Michigan is usually the first stop on my way back to Idaho. I feel like we could leave in the morning and continue on 80-West towards Utah. Half of me wants to and I think I would if I were alone on this trip. Long car rides like the one from Virginia to Michigan, always leave time for me to evaluate my life. Where am I going? How am I going to get there if I ever figure out where the hell I am going? Do I want to move? Will I ever get a real job? And other various problems that I have, but I should probably go back to therapy for answers to those ones…let’s not dwell.
All of my dad’s side of the family live in Michigan, so that means all of my cousins have stuck around there. My dad’s branch of the family tree is the only one that keeps on moving further out, by this I don’t mean that my family up in Michigan inbreed, I meant that they geographically move outwards. My brother and sister in Utah, a brother in Florida, and a sister in North Carolina. As far as I know, none of my cousin’s has left far from where they grew up…not even temporarily. There are so many of them that I don’t even know all of them. I have the names of about 10 of them, I think; I’m being very generous with myself. They are weird, I love them automatically because they are family, but it doesn’t change that they are weird, and that they think we are weird. It’s like how they try to tell us that we have accents when it’s obvious that they do. They have funny words for normal objects, I think they all have at least one tattoo, cuss like sailors, oh and did I mention that they are democrats? Yup, every last one of them! I have been home from my bubble of Rexburg, Idaho for almost two months and I had no idea what “the world” was really like until I hung out with them. Thank goodness for my one cousin who his own mother says he is “too damn conservative”. I like that he is conservative, it’s like finding a McDonald’s in Japan, something that is familiar in a strange place. I don’t really like McDonald’s…I do like my cousin though, I think you get my point.
This weekend one of my more crazy cousins wants me to go to an amusement park…I hate amusements parks. I pay too much money to go and stand around while everyone else rides roller coasters. This cousin however has invited another cousin who also doesn’t like rollercoaster. So we have earned the name of “the puke twins” and we’ll be paired off together. Last night though I had a dream that my cousin’s fiancé who I haven’t actually met came over to tell us that something happened to her and we weren’t going to be able to go. My subconscious reaching out to me? Possibly.
The other half of my dream involved being at work and there was a bagging contest. Baby face was there and kept trying to mess me up, but it was all in good fun. Then suddenly we were at a trial and a lady that I knew, but didn’t like was getting off for killing her husband. I went to her house to check up on her and the kids and the kids were home alone because the mom was out whoring herself around. Needless to say, I probably shouldn’t watch Dateline right before going to bed.