As you may have gathered from previous entries I am not really the type of person who believes in superstitions, fate, ghosties, ghoulies, Deities or any such nonsense. As far as I’m concerned the universe is a random set of events and we are all spinning round in a fortunately habitable environment until we eventually reach our inevitable eternal demise. Honestly, I’m a right laugh at parties I tell you.
So it was a great surprise to me when my mate Al called the other day.”Hello Al, how are things?” I asked. “Well... “, he said (ensuring that the vocal pause of three dots had been fulfilled), “To be honest, remember last week when we were coming back from Nottingham, and you had the car radio on at volume 13?”
“Yes?” I said (partially true - I remembered the trip but not such specific level of detail).
“Well...” he continued (again punctuated with the aural equivalent of three dots), “I should have said something at the time, but... well, you know.”
I couldn’t for the life of me anticipate what he was about to say. If you are anything like me, you’d expect him to accuse me of somehow impairing his hearing. But volume 13 on my car radio is not, as you might have assumed, two levels higher that the 11th setting like the amps on Spinal Tap or something. My car radio volume levels go up to about 30, so you’ll appreciate that setting 13 is not even remotely ‘rude boy’; it is less than half way on a moderately priced stereo and speaker system.
“What’s wrong?” I pressed.
“Well, it’s just that ever since then, everything has been going wrong.”
There followed a brief silence. It took me a while to work out what his actual point was. But when I did, it of course seemed most absurd to be blaming my stereo setting for a week’s worth of his own miserable misfortune. It is funny to think that during the drive I was completely oblivious whilst he sat there looking at volume 13, considering to whether to mention his disquiet over the setting, and then thinking back to it, silently fuming whenever misfortune befell him over the next week. How was I to respond to these allegations? Did I laugh derisively? Did I contradict his superstitions through a lecture based on reason and rational thought about the random nature of the universe? Did I give a pitying sneer to suggest he should, at 32 years old, probably start taking responsibility for his own actions? No – I did none of these- I simply apologised. That’s right, I actually sodding APOLOGISED!! And the weirdest thing of all was that I felt twinges of guilt and responsibility too!! Ridiculous behaviour. I tell you, militant rationalists like Richard Dawkins must be shitting themselves with me around. And for weeks I just couldn’t figure out why this was my initial reaction, but then today it struck me. The reason was empathy, pure and simple. For even I, “Mr-tell-the-kids-there’s-no-Santa-and spoil-Christmas”, can from time to time, fall victim to this mild superstition-belied obsessive compulsive disorder.
I actually noticed my own behavioural quirk at the gym. On the treadmill there is a digital display with a calorie-counter on it. I must admit that whenever the counter passes 66.6 calories, I am often mildly relieved. For some reason I never fail to convince myself there is a small chance that 66.6 calories, I might suffer a heart attack. Or worse still, get somehow wrong-footed and end up falling off the end of the treadmill. I never want to go through a humiliation like that again. Of course, realistically speaking the danger should be much worse when I hit 666 calories, rather than 66.6. But then if I get to a point where I have clocked up 666 calories on the treadmill, a heart-attack is realistically more a scientific and physical danger rather than a superstitious one.
So there you have it. My mind is both stupidly delusional and pathetically irrational. I give it four months before I’m caught with my dick in the caviar jar, trying to create myself an upper-class mermaid.
