13 July 2007

Something I've Noticed

Since my brother moved to Muskegon, Michigan, my mother has spent much of her time reading facts about Michigan, watching the weather, and taking notice of any even that happens in Michigan.
I learned that in Michigan, the blind can legally own a gun, and hunt with it without any supervision.
I felt compelled to tell my mother.
We were in Arizona when I found this fact out, from reading a book. I don't know if it's a actual fact or not, but I trusted the author enough to not lie about something that important, and so, put the book down and hollered at my mother, who was swimming in the lukewarm pool. I had just gotten out, and was waiting to get my body temperature up enough to go back in and have the water feel cool.
"Hey mom, did you know that blind people can hunt in Michigan?"
"Yeah."
She swam to the side of the pool and held herself steady above water on the ledge, alternating the bottom arm because the cement around the pool was hot.
"Well... isn't that weird?"
I asked this, rather unsure of myself because her frank response caught me off guard.
I was expecting this to devolve into jokes and sarcasm, or at least one slightly of color joke, before she went back to swimming.
The fact that she took this as a common thing, not worth noticing, worried me. I don't know if it worried me for my mother, or for myself.
If blind people being allowed to hunt freely, without an aide, was just another everyday occurrence, worth a barely audible "Yeah" which was more of a "So what? Let me get back to swimming" then maybe there was something wrong with the way my brain worked.
She went back to swimming, and I continued reading my book, until the glare of the sun got too hot, and I felt myself cooking from the inside out. I jumped in and the blind man shooting randomly wherever he wanted, calling it "hunting", and getting away with it, was quickly forgotten.

Until today, when I thought of something that bothered me. My mother was watching a TV show about beach homes, and I was thinking about how just a week ago we were all in Arizona, in a 4-star hotel, sitting poolside, drinking cold beers, and looking forward to my cousin's wedding. I noticed that there was a girl on the television who acted shy and demure about her two piece suit.
This interested me, which I told m mom about:
"You know what else I don't understand?" I asked her, having just realized something that I didn't "Get". I forget what it is now because my mother agreed with me.
"What?" she asked absently, looking at her crossword puzzle book while the show went to commercial.
"Why do these girls act so shy and demure about showing their bodies off, and yet still wear a two piece bathing suit?"
She shrugged and mumbled an "I don't know" answer which really meant "It's not something I think about because it makes sense to me" and went back to her book, and then the program, stopping any further conversation in its tracks.

I guess it's how my mind works. I guess I'm just a weird person. I think about these things when they cross my mind. They don't seem to be on anyone else's minds . So, I worry about my own state of mental health, because if everyone else seems to think it's perfectly normal for shy, demure people, insecure about their bodies, to wear a two piece bathing suit, or for blind people to be allowed, legally, to hunt without a guide, then why don't I?

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