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I lost my watch. I don't get it. I couldn't find it for like a week, and then I found it just sitting there on the floor by my bed. I mean, it was right there, it wasn't even behind something else.
Anyway, I found it, and I put it on, and I walked around knowing what time it was for almost an entire day. And then I lost it again.
It's weird, because I've never lost it before. Granted, I never even owned a watch until last May, but even so, I've never misplaced it.
Til now.
The thing that worries me is not that I misplaced a ten dollar watch, even though I am so totally broke right now that I can't even afford to replace it. No: What worries me is what all this means. You know, how Freud says that there are no accidents and that everything you do or say means something, even if you don't know what it is.
You know how Batman as a little kid watches his parents get murdered, and then spends the entire rest of his life studying and training so that he can dress up like a bat and beat the crap out of random people on the street. Fortunately for him, he was so rich that no one wanted to tell him how psychotic that is. Especially Alfred. What a butt-kisser. Does it not occur to him that he's not doing Bruce Wayne any favors by playing along with this delusional fantasy of his? Sure, you can look at this guy who's thirty years old, in perfect physical condition, who knows everything there is to know about every subject imaginable, and say I'm glad this guy is Batman, but if an eight-year-old comes to you and says "I want to study martial arts and criminology so that I can dress up like a bat and beat the crap out of people!" then is might be a good idea to encourage this kid to examine his career options.
And who designed and built the batmobile, and brought all that super-sophisticated equipment down into the bat-cave? So you're a bajillionaire super-hero crime fighter, still, someone knows this custom-built tank, and this boat, and this plane shaped like a bat, and this super-computer that fills a whole room, in a cave underneath your house. You couldn't have enough money to keep all that quiet.
The point is, Batman had this early childhood trauma, and it shaped everything he did afterwards. Of course, Batman was all "This one's for you, mom and dad!" every time he beat the crap out of someone, so he was totally aware of the effect it had on him. And he did conciously make all the choices that led him to become Batman, but I almost think that he was compelled to make those choices in the same way that serial killers are compelled to do the things they do, or like those emotionally cripple obsessive people have to touch the doorknob 15 times before entering a room, for reasons they may not even be aware of.
What I mean is how profilers can tell stuff about serial criminals just by looking at the crime scene, and it would be interesting if they could do the same thing with Batman. Like they would look at the way he punched some guy in the face, and the pattern of shattered bone, and say, "We're definitely looking for a white male, mid- to late thirties. Probably someone who never worked very hard, maybe someone rich and privileged who's grown frustrated with the justice system. Canvass the millionaires around here and see who has a cave under their house."
Which is different even than, say, Darth Vader. Now Darth Vader was just pure evil just because. It's what he chose to be. He liked the power, and it overwhemed him. He made this decision to blow up the planet Alderaan, and kill all those people, even though he was cool at first and tried to be a good guy.
Darth Vader isn't like Batman. And neither of them are like me. And none of this brings me any closer to the explanation of why I keep losing my watch.
My friend has suggested that maybe I was traumatized in early childhood by my mother making me eat green beans.That's hard to imagine, because I have no strong feelings about green beans one way or the other. Well, except that I like to say "green beans" over and over, because it rhymes, and not many foods do.
Sometimes I just sit and say "green beans" over and over, just because.
Green beans.
Green beans.
Green beans.
My name is Greenbeans, John J. Greenbeans.
It's rare that food names rhyme like that, although I guess you could have yellow jello, and people like that. And I used to get this bread that was made with cranberries, so technically that was red bread. And I've heard of people stewing rabbit with apples and plums and berries and stuff, so that could be blue stew. So theoretically, you could have a meal of green beans, yellow jello, red bread, and blue stew. And you could invite Dr. Seuss to dinner..
Also, there is a specific kind of bean that's called green bean even though there are a great many beans that are green. For instance, lima beans are not green beans, even though they are technically green and also, in fact, beans.
Wow, now I'm starting to freak out.
This is like that thing where if a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it, how would you even know that it fell?
I found my watch. It went through the washing machine. Apparently, water-resistant is different than water-proof. But its still running. The thing is, I am no closer to figuring out why I keep losing it.
Dammit.
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