I Drink Milk From the Container and Other Dirty Little Secrets

Yeah. Like you’ve never done it. Liar. Whatever.

We all have our dark little secrets. Things we’d rather polite people not know about us. Things we do that we think other people don’t notice. How many times have you seen some guy scratch his ass and follow up with a sniff his fingers? Yeah. I know. That just pulled up a visual you thought you’d manage to suppress for all time. You’re welcome. My sister Parrish’s dirty little secret was that she was a nose picker. I mean a professional nose picker. Like the inevitable guy next to you on the freeway. The one who doesn’t realize they are being watched. The compulsion to pick her nose was so paramount at times that she wouldn’t realize that the sound of you gagging was related to the fact that she was talking to you while her finger was jammed up her nose and half-way up to her brain. (Since she’s dead I can totally get away with telling you this.)

We’ve all got our quirks. I know it cheeses Dave out that I drink from the milk container. I try not to do it a lot. At least not in front of him. But seriously, he and I are the only ones who drink that milk and we both know where the other’s mouth has been. And we brush our teeth regularly. I call it a minor sin.

My bigger problem, and the one that I think embarrasses Dave the most, is my need to watch each and every episode of some really bad TV shows. And I mean all. I have to see the whole series of re-runs from beginning to end. Back in the 90’s I got caught in a late night addiction to re-runs of Matt Houston, Star Trek the Next Generation, and Star Trek Deep Space Nine. You can credit the incredibly poor British TV programming for the Trekie incidents. When Dave and I first moved into together it was Sabrina The Teenage Witch. It’s not even necessarily the case that I like what I’m watching. I just feel compelled once I’ve watched some of it to see all of it.

I do this with books too. I will download a book that is part of a trilogy or series on my iPhone and nex thing I know, despite wanting to pull my hair from my roots, I find that I need to listen to the rest. I have punished myself through years of Patricia Cornwell drivel – until finally I had to give myself an intervention when I was angrier than her lead characters and was considering taking tips from her books on how to stage the crime scene when I finally killed Kay Scarpetta. More recently I’ve found myself listening to the teen saga of The Secret Circle and even worse The All Souls trilogy about witches and vampires that makes me want to slit my own wrists with a dull spoon. Yeah. I dunno what it is about the witches and vampire shit that makes me want to read them in the first place. I always end up hating them.

There are also movies, usually chick flicks that aren’t even a genre I will pay money to see in the theatres, that I can watch over, and over, and over, and over. Dear God I wish I knew why, but I can watch Practical Magic with the dreadful Nicole Kidman every time it’s on TV. Same thing with Sweet Home Alabama. I can watch both of those over and over back to back while I’m cleaning the house or putting away laundry. I find the story lines insipid and the acting mediocre, but like the good classic Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz, I can watch it any time it’s on. Dave really hates it when I do this and make him go watch his football or golf on the smaller TV in his man room so I can watch it on the big fancy TV in the living room. Yeah. I’m not sure why he’s not left my ass yet either.

Yeah. I know. You thought I was gonna tell you twisted little things I like to do in the dark. Sure. I’ve got those too, and Dave has the physical and emotional scars to prove it. But those, quite frankly, are none of your fuckin’ business you nosy parker.

So. I told you mine. Now you tell me yours.