Disillusioned

Robert Duncan McNeil smokes.

I don't even understand why I didn't notice. I mean, i've read that interview a dozen times, and I never noticed it. And yet tonight, I saw it. "As he lights up a cigarette", in one of those descriptive style interviews that writers love to use.

I think my heart shattered and one of the pink monkeys in my head died.

Robert Duncan McNeill smokes.

Maybe he doesn't smoke anymore, maybe it was just then, and it was cool then, during the 80's. A lot of dumb things were cool then, like huge shoulder pads and toxic hairspray and really bad eye make-up.

Maybe he quit when he had his kids, because he is such a family man and that is a huge incentive...

And why am I bothering with this???

It really bothers me how I can be so troubled by something such as this (I was close to tears...close to) and yet not really be so attached to something such as...well, the environment.

I should cry every time someone I like screws up the segregation bins. MO2 always messes it up and throws his cigarettes anywhere he wants, and yet that never brought me to tears. And I know this guy. Heck, he smokes in my house. The only time he puts it out is when I start to really complain (I have this nose krinkle thing that really gets to people) and even then it's done with an eyeroll.

Heck, my dad smokes and he is of The Mold.

Which means, Damian Lewis probably smokes/smoked, Linden Ashby and Alessandro Nivolla probably smokes/smoked, and we all know that Nick Lea smokes...

And for Kahless sake, did I really need to know that?! Why couldn't I have just memorized a couple of math formula. That would have been a lot more helpful to my life as a college student.

I mean, I don't use cosign or any of the stuff I would have grasped in trig, but I would have at least learned them. As sure as I did adding stuff. I had to compensate for my inability to do higher math by developing a compulsive need to add things. Mentally. As if adding long colums of three or four digit numbers in my head would make things better.

Seriously, sometimes I wonder about these celebrity crushes that I have.

Luis once said that I was like a 12 year old high on Bop. I was giggly, hyper, and suddenly with 10 memory points higher.

I smacked him in the head and told him to at least compare me to a kid who knew all the facts in baseball cards.

There's a brief period from when I was 12 that I was into Bop. Very brief, like 2 months. A mere 10 weeks that I had to hide way back in high school because I had a reputation for being one of the weird popular kids, and the popular kids didn't read things such as Bop. Yuck.

It didn't really matter anyway, because my freshman year was blocked from everyone's memory. No one but my classmates that first year remembered me as a freshman, which is fine with me since I was really different as a freshman.

I hung out with a fun but rowdy bunch of friends. I was totally into MO1, and we used to go to school on Saturdays just to see him. I don't remember what excuse I gave the school to give me a permit or what the hell he was doing there on a Saturday, all I can remember now is that I was blind enough to give up one of my weekends just to catch glimpses of him.

Then on weekdays, i'd stay a couple of hours after school to just bum around. On at least one day of the week, we'd have a soda fight. We'd pop open a Mountain Dew and then let it fizz out. In class, we'd try and help each other with homework and studying, which never really worked since we'd revert to kidding around.

The following year, my teachers placed us in different classes. I was placed in the higher sections, the others were in rooms in another floor, while the others transferred to other schools.

My accident happened when I was 14, and I spent most of the year working to heal my left arms 2nd degree burns and turning into the Catcher in The Rye. Few months later, in a speech competition called the "Smart Interview" (I was an interviewee) I stood in front of the whole school and told them I was pro-contraceptives.

It was a Catholic school.

I'd gained some sort of noteriety for my accident, but saying that up on stage in front of the whole school just sealed the deal and lost me the competition. We were winning at that point, my answer totally did us in. Morality was 40% and my statement got us a 0.

Afterwards, a couple of teachers walked up to me and gave me a lecture. After my fifth sermon on condoms and the Catholic church, my journalism teacher came up to me and told me I did a good job.

Imagine that.

My homeroom advisor--who was also my biology teacher--kept babbling that she didn't teach me those things in Biology class. My religion teacher was in a panic. A teacher from another class gave me a frown and a curt opinion. Even my english teacher approached me and asked me whatever it was that possesed me to say that and throw away the match. Even my spiritual advisor gave me a reaming out and a primer on Vatican II.

But only Mrs. Corpuz came up to me and told me I did a great job.

She only taught upperclassmen, so I wouldn't have her for another year. The way she took the time to just stop and tell me that I did okay really made an impact on me.

But then, she made an impact on everyone, because that's just the way she is. Until now, I know a lot of people who admit to her influence in their lives, how we cannot make a decision without thinking that she is looking over our shoulder, hoping we make the right one.

She changed my life.

...

See? That's something I should think about, and not how Robbie McNeill smokes/smoked cigarettes. Well, Kahless I still haven't forgotten haven't I.

Oh well, at least it's not a big deal anymore.