Curiosity

Every day growing up, I would hear the same thing yelled at me over and over again. “Stop asking so many damn questions!” Honestly. You think I don’t shut up now? Imagine me six-years-old. I wanted to know everything, understand everything, touch everything, smell everything, try everything, hell I even wanted to taste everything. Building with a second door? “Mom, why does that building have a second door?” Man with a muzzled dog? “Dad, why does that dog have a cage on his mouth?” And when he sighed and told me something about keeping its mouth shut (and then going on to mutter something about buying one), I’d look back at the dog with a small “oh”.

“Do all people have dogs with muzzles? Can I have a dog? How old do dogs get? How many kinds of dogs are there? Can I touch that dog? Have you ever eaten a dog? Can I eat a dog?”

The problem is, not a damned thing has changed since I hit puberty and moved out of the house. I swear to god, were you to give me the option of a million dollars or a shoebox with mysterious contents (What could be in it? Flight tickets? A lease to a house in the Caribbean? Oh! A lizard? What about a billion dollars?), I’d be hard pressed to choose the million. And I’m not exactly rolling in dough.

The other day I stumbled upon a tray sitting on a pillar outside covered in mysterious potato-like lumps (Why were they outside? Why were there so many? And on a tray? Were they edible? Who would have put them outside, were that the case?). Naturally, I stopped dead and side tracked to go pick one up. I poked it and squished it and smelled it a little, but just as I was breaking it in half, a man stepped out of the building beside me.

“Put that down! What – did you just fucking think you’d go help yourself to something to eat! Throw that out! I can’t use it!”

Flabbergasted, I backed away from the plastic tray, potato-hunk in hand and told him that I had no idea it was his and had no intentions of eating it. “But… what is it?” The man, however, had huffed his way back through the door without even the courtesy of telling me and I spent the rest of the day wondering what on earth I had just picked up. And the worst part is that I still don’t know what the fuck the thing was.

All that being said, I got a message the other day from a guy I haven’t talked to in two years (I had to ask myself, what’s he doing now? Is he still in Calgary? What does he do with his spare time? How old is he, again? I wonder if he still goes out for drinks.). It was a short, sweet, simple little note telling me he enjoyed my writing. Dope. No, really – it totally made my day. But it made me wonder (apart from what pieces he’s read, whether he usually reads, if he’s been creeping on my facebook statuses, etc.), how many people actually read these things? Honestly. I get so many completely random, unexpected people tell me that they have, in fact, read some of the shit I post online that I really, really, really wonder who reads this. Am I imagining all of this? Am I posting stories to the vast, electronic emptiness that is my future career? Are these people even real?

So, please. Let me know? Because it is driving me up the motherfucking wall.