A Girl's Imagination Runs Wild

Ami Clayton
University Wire
03-25-2008

(College Heights Herald) (UWIRE) BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- I have heard that there is a fine line between imagination and mental illness.

I fear sometimes that my delicate balancing act on that line may tip at any moment and send me sprawling down 10 stories to a grisly demise that sees me wackier than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

Luckily, the interference that my overactive imagination causes in my daily life is something I can easily conceal.

That is, of course, the reason I have chosen to write about it, to take you, dear reader, on what may be a familiar journey into paranoia.

We'll begin with something simple. Microwaves.

I don't have a microwave in my dorm room. I claim that this is because, with a meal plan, I don't really need one.

The truth of the matter is that whenever I stand outside a microwave, watching my food cook inside it, I get a headache, and I swear that I can feel escaping microwaves frying my brain cells. The headache, I figure, is their kamikaze revenge on me for daring to make Easy Mac at their expense.

Then there's smoking.

I don't smoke on a regular basis, but long nights here at the Herald office tend to call for it. I go out back light up a cigarillo.

Admittedly, I began doing this because I pretend I'm a dragon when I exhale the smoke, but I digress.

At the time, the smoking seems alright. Then, a few hours later, I find myself lying awake in my bed, imagining tar creeping into my body. In my brain, the carcinogens crawl around the inside of my lungs until they find the tastiest, fleshiest pink part, then they burrow in like ticks and suck away my oxygen.

I smoke at most once a week, yet I'm still convinced I'm going to get cancer by the time I'm 25.

It's hard to sleep with cancer and tar-ticks weighing so heavily on my mind. So, I can't microwave food. I can't sleep after I smoke. Surely that's the extent of my logical dysfunction, right?

Oh no. I can't even pee without suffering various neuroses.

If, for instance, I go into a bathroom in which there is a bathtub with the shower curtain drawn, I absolutely must check behind the curtain for ax murderers before I do my business.

Yes, I have a plan for what I would do if I actually found one, but it's a secret. I wouldn't want to give any aspiring ax murderers out there an unfair advantage.

Oh, and God forbid the toilets be automatic, but I'm sure I can form an entire separate commentary on those.

Long story short, little glimpses of paranoia are the spice of my life.

But in a world where Armin Mewes and that preacher who was found dead in his house wearing two wetsuits exist, at least I'm the harmless kind of crazy.