The gold finch and the crazy lady.
There was a gold finch in the house yesterday morning. My dad worked late on Sunday and didn’t come home until about 9am. My mom went out to get groceries after she got him breakfast and he went to bed. Since their room is located right over the garage, she decided to leave the door open so the garage door opener wouldn’t wake him when she got home. When she got home she noticed a gold finch flying around the storage loft my dad build. We thought he didn’t know how to get back outside. He looked kind of scared. So I started helping my mom bring the groceries in. I blocked open the mudroom door so I wouldn’t have to open it while standing on the stairs where I broke my foot with an armload of heavy groceries and went out into the garage. I saw the gold finch finally make it out of the loft and head toward the garage door. I decided to stay perfectly still so I wouldn’t scare him into flying in the house instead. After a few failed attempts to fly out by going over the garage door, the bird turned around and headed straight into the house. He flew around from window to window landing on top of my mom’s valences, but was unable to locate either of the doors we opened for him. Finally, he decided to go for the big second story window we have in our entry way. He banged himself up against it a few times before landing on the top of the two tension rods holding the sheers on the window. Eventually he went behind the sheers and couldn’t find his way out. So my mom got a ladder, climbed up and removed the bottom tension rod, grabbed the bird and released him outside.
I thought that was an interesting story, but I wanted to talk about an observation I made recently. I’ve always been more aware of accidental contact than most people. You know, when you hand something to someone and your hands accidentally touch. I’ve always been very keenly aware of such things and tried to avoid them. I’m not one of those people who has to go wash their hands 20 times just because someone touched them, but for some reason I’ve just never been very comfortable with accidental contact. I’ve found recently that I’ve been even more aware of these things than usual and it made me think that maybe I was losing my mind more than I already have. I went mini-golfing with a new friend the other day and I noticed that every time I reached into the cup to get our balls and hand him his I dropped it from about an inch above his hand rather than just handing it to him to avoid touching him. I was thinking a couple of nights ago that it was kind of weird since I’m not usually that bad about touching people. I was talking about it with an old friend today and it was suggested that maybe it was a symptom of my natural reluctance to trust people. I think that makes sense. I mean, it has been a long time since I’ve been around new people and I do have trouble trusting. Touching someone and allowing them to touch you do entail a lot of trust. Since I’m more aware of even the smallest touch than most people, I have trouble trusting new people, and I’m around new people more often than I have been in years, it’s kind of logical that I’m behaving more neurotically about touching people than I usually am. That’s probably all it is.
I thought that was an interesting story, but I wanted to talk about an observation I made recently. I’ve always been more aware of accidental contact than most people. You know, when you hand something to someone and your hands accidentally touch. I’ve always been very keenly aware of such things and tried to avoid them. I’m not one of those people who has to go wash their hands 20 times just because someone touched them, but for some reason I’ve just never been very comfortable with accidental contact. I’ve found recently that I’ve been even more aware of these things than usual and it made me think that maybe I was losing my mind more than I already have. I went mini-golfing with a new friend the other day and I noticed that every time I reached into the cup to get our balls and hand him his I dropped it from about an inch above his hand rather than just handing it to him to avoid touching him. I was thinking a couple of nights ago that it was kind of weird since I’m not usually that bad about touching people. I was talking about it with an old friend today and it was suggested that maybe it was a symptom of my natural reluctance to trust people. I think that makes sense. I mean, it has been a long time since I’ve been around new people and I do have trouble trusting. Touching someone and allowing them to touch you do entail a lot of trust. Since I’m more aware of even the smallest touch than most people, I have trouble trusting new people, and I’m around new people more often than I have been in years, it’s kind of logical that I’m behaving more neurotically about touching people than I usually am. That’s probably all it is.