NARCISSISTIC? WHO? ME?

When I was a very young boy, I used to watch the radio. 

Yes. Watch.

Having not been alive long enough to develop the eccentricities dominating my life now, I was considered a normal radio watcher. Never could figure out why people so intensely eyeballed that big mahogany box that broadcasted their favorite radio programs.
I tried coloring during a radio show, but it somehow  distracted me. When I tried turning my back to the box and just listening, my mind began to wander. I was missing  most of the broadcast, so I resumed my fierce ogling at the radio, feeling like an uncertified idiot.

As a definitely certified adult, I do not watch TV. Heavens no, that would be sane. I only listen. I tell myself I’m too busy reading or writing to actually watch the boob tube. I reserve my watching talent strictly for the radio.

Most of the time I have the TV tuned into news shows. Never watching. Only listening. Until recently I couldn’t resist snorting or mumbling short but snide comments about certain news items as I wrote or read. My endless spoken commentaries annoyed my wife like a gnat so, even though it hurt like a hangover, I stifled myself. Sort of.

Turns out I was unwittingly substituting something even worse. One day my wife announced that she was fed up to the funny bone. Huh? Before she went to live in another section of the house, she explained. As I sit near the TV reading or writing, it seems I silently mock most of the news items I’m listening to. 

Who knew?

She had recorded the “spectacle” and tossed me her phone. There I sat writing like a demon, interrupting my task periodically to perform facial expressions and hand gestures that accompanied each news item. My visual rhythms amazed me. Had I founded a new art form? Why would my wife want to miss out on this?

Raw talent. Pure poetry.

If, for example, a killer is quoted as saying: “I was unaware that the gun was loaded,” I shrug my shoulders, shake my head no and elevate the palms of my hands into the air in mock innocence. If an item reports a citizen’s angry outburst, my face contorts to what I imagine the rage must have looked like during the utterance. Sometimes pounding my fist on the desk, then resuming the task before me.

Until my wife showed me, I had no idea I was doing this. Personally, I’m awestruck. I immediately stuck a mirror on the wall facing my desk to gander a glimpse of funny boy’s insane reactions to the news as I read or write while listening to TV. Forget selfies, I prefer to steal a stare into that speculum, which reflects the enchanting anti-hero I’ve so mysteriously become. Talk about multi-tasking!

I’ve dang near swept myself off my feet. Yup, my wife has nicknamed me Narcissus.

The other week when I heard a report that several former supporters were “now distancing themselves” from a certain wayward politician, I noticed that I was suddenly holding my hand out like a traffic cop to emulate “distancing.” (Actually, I looked  more like an early Diana Ross as she sang “Stop! In the Name of Love.”).

The other day the news anchor announced that authorities were searching a wooded area for a suspected criminal. I glanced at the mirror and caught myself mocking the scene: first by turning my hands into sun visors to shade  my eyes while affecting a search-pose, and then by turning my hands into binoculars. 

Lock me up. Lock me up.

Does a standup career lurk within my grasp? Deadlines, be damned. Sometimes, I’m up until dawn laughing at myself. I’m a riot, I tell you. I’d make a video but I’m afraid of being committed soon after it’s posted.

My psychiatrist has begged me to seek therapy. Elsewhere.
I attribute my lunacies to me dear, sweet Irish Mother. No, she never dropped me on my head during my infancy. But, I’m told that, as she watched the radio, she was known to rock me to sleep. 

With a rock.

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