Do you ever have the insatiable urge to do something totally wacky? Something that would startle others? Something that breaks all of the laws of etiquette, business or normal rational behavior?
I do.
This is a topic I used to discuss with my old roommate Shannon, as she often experienced (and sometimes acted upon) these urges.
Before you go calling me crazy, or signing me up for the next support group, let me clarify. Often these urges are as simple as telling jokes in a crowded, awkward elevator. It may even be as simple as having ice cream and chocolate sauce for dinner. Sometimes it can be to shove someone off the sidewalk for walking irritatingly slow in large herds.
However, I don't act on these urges.
My first experience with this type of thing was in church as a kid. It was so quiet in there during mass, so peaceful and serene. I just wanted to stand up on the wooden pew, raise my hands over my head and yell out something crazy. Since I grew up Catholic, and didn't belong to a very progressive church where they may look fondly on someone expressing their devotion in such a wild way, it would have been very strange. I wasn't even fighting the urge to speak in tongues—just to behave madly and cause a ruckus. My mother would have been mortified.
I wasn't even a rebel, or a kid who pushed the limits or even colored outside the lines, but these urges exist.
Still, today, I find myself hit with a sudden urge every now and then. To sing at the top of my lungs in the grocery store. To dance down the halls of my office. To skydive. To really tell a client what I think of them. To respond to passive agressive emails or text messages in a truthful, and harshly frank, real way. To glare back at the stranger who rudely stares you up and down. To drink champagne for breakfast. To drive 140 mph on the Edens. To pour water all over a stranger's head. To dye my hair dark brown. To buy a one-way plane ticket to Australia. To jump down onto the El tracks to see if they REALLY would electrocute you upon contact. To read my book aloud on the bus, with voices for each character. To cartwheel across the park lawn (ok, so I do that one every so often). To pick up and move back to my hometown. To approach the beautiful girl on the street and pay her a random compliment. To call in sick and just lay in bed watching bad TV all day. To get a tattoo just to say I did. To tell the obnoxious teenagers on Michigan Avenue what I really think about their outfits. And so on.
Am I fighting these urges because to act on them would make me a crazy person? Or are they really so fleeting that by the time my body catches up with my brain, I've moved on? Or, am I just too shy to be the totally wacky person that sometimes I want to be?
So, I pose the question to you, Internet. What do you have the urge to do, but don't?
If I'm the unkowing cause of a terrible movement of people acting irrationally, I am really sorry.
Fight the urge!
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7 comments:
I read an article about this impulse control thing in the New Yorker a few months ago. Apparently, the part of your brain that convinces you NOT to do those crazy things can be damaged and it is a serious condition!
This is great. I fight the urge to sing along with my iPod as I'm riding my scooter through traffic.
And when I'm having really terrible days, asking a questionably fat lady when the baby is due.
I know exactly what you mean. For years I had the urge to jump on the conference table during a meeting, spin around like the Tasmanian Devil and kick people's papers all over before running out of the room.
I refrained.
But I think an urge like that is different from an urge to compliment someone, or to go on a wild trip to Australia, or to dye your hair. Some urges shouldn't be fought, you know?
One day a colleague of mine walked into Mike and I's office for a chat. Another colleague joined us. Suddenly the one said "I am really having an urge to splash this glass of water all over your face." He said "go ahead" not thinking she would. So she did.
It was too funny!
I felt SO much better after I did the following:
- really tell a client what I think of them.
- glare back at the stranger who rudely stares you up and down.
- drink champagne for breakfast
- dye my hair dark brown
I still really want to pierce my nose. nothing huge, just a teeny tiny silver speck. I am only holding back after looking at the permanent hole in my eyebrow after I successfully completed the urge to pierce my face when i was a sophomore in college.
somethings are better left unpierced.
Back in the late 90's, I dated a boy who owned a few guns. He took me to a shooting range and I had a BLAST. No really, it's a ton of fun. I've wanted to do it ever since but I've never mustered the courage to just go and take a lesson or twelve.
I always want to push someone onto the train tracks to see if they would get electrocuted. I would NEVER do it though. I have no desire to jump down there myself. I am a bad person.
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