okay. so back in the day when i was thinking about doing this blog every day in june go! challenge, i promised myself i wouldn't blog about the same thing twice. for the record, the initial june go! challenge was to post an e. e. cummings quote as my facebook status every day.
i scratched that for blogging. i'm not really sure how they correspond.
anyway, back in the day, i promised myself i wouldn't blog about something more than once. i've already somewhat broken this rule by blogging about serial killers twice and technically criminal minds twice. if your mind is as circuitous as mine is, i blogged about the same thing. if we get technical, i merely mentioned criminal minds and the focus was really on cannibalism the second time, but i'm really only technical when it comes to grammar and teaching kids how to do freestyle drills.
this blog is going to be breaking the whole 'don't blog about the same thing twice'. but i can't not blog about this. the entire time this was happening i kept thinking, "I WILL BLOG ABOUT THIS... AS SOON AS I GET HOME." i am putting off real person activities (emptying the dishwasher, doing dishes, sweeping) for this blog. the adult part of my mind is dying. the blogging part is excited that i'm finally getting this out. the major themes that are going to repeated are these: the lion king, emotionality (which is merely mentioned occasionally in previous blogs), listening to songs on repeat, and driving. they coincide, i promise.
so it starts like this. do you ever find yourself in one of those situations that's not really all that crazy, but it feels crazy and all you can really do is blink, open your mouth and try to form words, but in the end you just kind of sit there with wide eyes and have your mouth open like a fish? if you don't find yourself in these situations, you haven't lived.
i had one of these moments driving to class today.
yesterday was my first day of class at the new time, so i left pretty early to guage about how long it would take me to get to IPFW and to see exactly how crowded the parking lot would be. i'm a thin, athletic individual, but i'm american. i'm going to park as close to the language building as i can.
today, after guaging the time, i left three minutes later. part of this was because i realized it was probably a good idea to pee before i left. nobody wants to be stuck learning spanish verbs when your bladder is about to explode. it's just... well... uncomfortable.
for having left only three minutes later, i swear, the traffic volume had DOUBLED from yesterday. i didn't really notice until i reached one of the busiest intersections in the city; st. joe and clinton. i was on clinton, trying to turn left onto st. joe. this intersection happens to be right in front of the private catholic high school. they're legit, only wear khaki and blue polo shirts, and say the hail mary instead of the pledge of allegiance.
the left turn lane is not long enough to negotiate the volume of traffic that i was experiencing. i was hanging out into the regular lane with my turn signal on and my window down, and i was listening very intently to "king of pride rock", the last song on my lion king soundtrack. in the movie, it's the epic music where simba takes his epic walk up pride rock, roars his mighty roar that says, HEY I'M KING NOW and then it gets all happy when he has a kid and rafiki is like, HEY. ANOTHER LION I CAN THRUST INTO THE AIR. yeah. that song. on my broadway soundtrack, it's about ten times better than the movie because the vocals are at least twenty times as fantastic.
while i was listening, i was concentrating on traffic. traffic on st. joe was backed up. really backed up. backed up into the middle of the intersection where i would be attempting to turn within three lights. my turn lane was backed up enough that i sat through that light four times. when i got to the fourth time, i was really worried that that taurus, who was just kind of chilling in the middle of the intersection, wouldn't be out of my way. or the three cars in front of me. and i began to worry that i wouldn't make it to class on time. rule number one: do not leave for class three minutes late. the traffic will bite you in the butt.
i turned onto st. joe without incident. the taurus moved. the three cars in front of me moved. i got up to cruising speed, grabbed my volume dial, and cranked it to the right. i do not want to know how loud my car volume can go. when both of my ears were plugged up and i really wanted to jam, i've gotten it up to thirty. i normally drive with it on seven. the only way i would attempt to see exactly how loud it will go is if i had those pink fluffy earmuffs that professor sprout has in harry potter and the chamber of secrets when working with mandrakes. my stereo is awesome. my speakers are better.
while i had king of pride rock going on repeat and i was driving with my windows down, i truly listened to the song. now, none of it is in english until they end when they do a little reprise of the circle of life, but i could hear emotion in every single voice. i didn't even need to picture what was happening in the movie, i just needed to listen to the wonderful music of the lion king.
and without warning, i started bawling my eyes out.
so now i'm driving down st. joe with my windows down on my way to spanish class, listening to zulu entirely too loudly, crying my eyes out over the emotionality of the song. for about a minute i wonder why the hell i'm crying, realize i'm just entirely too emotional of a person, and then try to focus on the individual voices in the song. there's a woman in the chorus of the lion king who can sing way higher than i want to contemplate. i focused on her and how much vocal training she must have gone through. then i wondered if she was one of the american actresses who did lessons in zulu or if she was one of the african actresses we hired in new york for the production. i figured the latter.
as i neared my next turn, wiping my eyes and pressing repeat so i could continue with my emotional music journey, i saw a homeless person standing on the median across the river. i wiped my eyes and got a really good look at him, mostly out of curiosity. in fort wayne it's illegal to be homeless, so most homeless people are good at hiding out. but this guy was just standing on the median in sweaty, nasty clothes with a big grin on his face.
one thought went through my head as i looked at him: isn't that my swim coach?
i gaped. and wiped away more tears. and gaped. and did the whole thing where i sat with my mouth open and blinked like a fish. the situation was not that crazy, but it felt that crazy because i had just finished crying over a mostly instrumental song about a lion and now i had the absurd notion that this homeless man was my old swim coach from high school. this is obviously not true. he's getting married in four weeks and i saw him on saturday at that really fun grad party with the mosquitoes.
when i pulled into the parking lot at IPFW, i realized that i was losing my mind. and that i would have to blog about this. i was terrifically upset that i just couldn't sit down and get it all out now, but i had to walk to the LA building, scale the stairs to the second floor, meet my professor and sit through two and a half hours of learning the imperfect tense and how to make equal and inequal comparisons. but before i did this, i tweeted about the fact that listening to king of pride rock had made me cry like a two year old. i managed to send it before my phone battery died.
whilst driving home, i thought about blogging about this. i began to write this in my head. i kept listening to king of pride rock and lamented that my stereo, as awesome as it is, lacks a repeat button. so every time the song ends with the epic BOOM (and the movie screen says THE LION KING in gigantic red letters), i have to press the down seek arrow to start the song over. at least i wasn't driving and eating mini wheats like yesterday.
sometimes i think that i am emotionally unstable. listening to king of pride rock should not make me cry my eyes out when i have more important things to worry about, like not rea rending the person in front of me. i should not instantly think that every homeless man who looks like my old swim coach actually is my old swim coach. i should be responsible and save my blogging for after i do adult things, like empty the dishwasher, wash my dishes, and eat a slice of pie.
so again i blogged about the lion king. and about driving. and how me being emotional is probably a personality flaw (mostly the crying and the intense excitedness that steal me on occasion). but i guess to sum up this blog, it's about something that i haven't blogged about before, and that's how i turn ordinary circumstances into something that feels completely out of control and i open my mouth like a fish and look stupid trying to handle it.
i suppose i could look more stupid doing other things. like emptying the dishwasher and talking to myself in spanish. which i'm about to go do. day three of being a real person.
okay. so this is the origianl cast broadway album version of king of pride rock. i think you should listen to it. if you cry, that'll make me feel so much better about myself as a person. if you don't, well, you're normal. and listen for that woman i mentioned, she's pretty legit.
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