Where have you been all week? Only one of you stopped by, is there a widespread flu that has kept most of you from coming on? Gosh I hope not.

You know what happens when you don’t swing by much for a week, right? No? Okay, well it gives the Canadians time and room to grow in their loyal readership.

Maybe I should start writing Friday afternoon blogs to help promote good friendships between the U.S. and Canada soon, after all, the Canadian readership consists of all two households in Canada that have internet access having been consistently loyal to this very blog.

With this in mind, China readers, this guy busking for money is doing a great job, and I think that our two nations could learn a lot from him.

What do you guys think?

Last night as I waited inside my local pizzeria for my cheese calzone, that semi new to within the past four months Dixie Chicks song that goes something like “I’m not ready to back down, I’m not ready to give up”, or something like that, came on the radio inside the pizza place, and I found myself internally sings what I think were the words to this song.

Not only was I internally singing it, but I was finding the song to be really really beautiful, it was very simple, without too much complications to be meaningless. This had me thinking that I really must like the Dixie Chicks, and I don’t care if they’re labeled into the Country genre, I really like them.

Then the pizza guy said $12.50 (I was getting more than a calzone) and I was in such my own world from this song it took him saying $12.50 three times for me to understand what it was he was talking about.

Yeup, the Dixie Chicks they’ll do that to you when you’re on their cloud, they rock.

P.S. I never said that I had the greatest taste in music.

Somehow I forgot to relay this story in my blog. Two Sundays ago it we had a warm Spring-like day with temperatures in the 60s.

It was a great day, so the Cheese and I went down by the water to toss the football around, we both really enjoy this, and I got to do some “Action Jackson” moves. “Action Jackson” moves are named after the movie, and basically consist of running and doing some sort of pansy type of jump while saying “Action Jackson” – I grew up tossing the football like this with friends, and continue the AC tradition for some odd reason.

Anyways after we were done with our game of catch we went for a long stroll back to my place, and then ended up taking a detour to swing on the swings in John Carty Park under the Verrazano Bridge. This particular park has always had its own distinct feel to it that no other park in NYC has, at least to me.

Part of this is due to it being located at the bottom of hill, with the bridge ramps going alongside, up and over its entire length, another part is it is located next to an Army Base so that blocks other residents from using the park – army kids usually play inside the base grounds on their own much cooler parks – we used to sneak in as a kid, and lastly and more importantly this particular park tends to draw much more of the old school creepy Brooklynite type of person – at least that’s how it was when I grew up.

So as we entered the gates to this park that are about 50 feet past the last support posts in the picture – you might recognize this park from the movie Saturday Night Fever. Anyways, as we entered we spotted a guy with a fat rabbit sitting at a bench and table. To be more particular it was a creepy looking middle aged, fat, sweaty, bald guy, sporting a goat tee, who hit a 10 out of 10 on the Beehive Perv Scale petting a fat rabbit sitting at a park table.

As the Cheese and I swung happily until I got motion sickness, which was a first for swings, we watched the pervy rabbit guy sit and watch the kids, and had hoped that at least one of the half dozen or so kids running around were his offspring. I doubt that any of them were his; as it quickly appeared to me that pervy rabbit man was at the park with only his rabbit, his eyes, and the desire for close contact with children. While the Cheese didn’t want to believe this, I am 99% certain that he was.

Scene: Child walking through park sees a pet rabbit, wants to touch pet rabbit, and ask questions about pet rabbit. This is all very innocent since children are by nature curious. Throw in sweaty forehead of pathetic looking fat guy with rabbit and you have a scene of an after school movie.

So as the Cheese and I sat around crashing into each other on swings, a group of ten boys that I appeared to be around the 5th, 6th, or 7th grades came into the park with a basketball. Eight of them were white as can be, two of them were black – one was light skinned black, and the other dark skinned black. At first it appeared that the group of boys flocked to the pervy dude with the rabbit, then as the seconds went by it became apparent that the dark skinned black kid knew what was up and kept walking, while the others all stayed there for minutes playing with the rabbit while pervy looking guy was entirely too close to them for my comfort.

Was the dark skinned black kid the only one taught the “Don’t talk the strangers routine”? I doubt it. Was he the only one that was not into seeing a rabbit up close? Probably not; I’m not sure what exactly it was that made that one kid keep walking, but whatever it was it was definite street smarts, and I was glad that at least one kid had some, yet at the same time it gave me a good laugh to see the irony of the entire creepy situation.

(Photo was found on forgotten-ny.com which is a great site about NYC)

Definition: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, OCD, is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions).

Somehow I have managed to go through life without being diagnosed officially with a few things that I believe I most likely have, one of which is OCD.

Some people worry that their hands are always dirty, and that’s just crazy.

Here are some things that I find myself doing.

Did I Double Lock The Door After I Left – I will close my front door, double lock it, begin to walk up the block, and then I will have an internal argument over whether or not the door is actually locked (Obsessive Behavior).

This happens until I finally either keep walking and worry, or abruptly turn around (Compulsive Behavior) and walk back home a few hundred feet and then double check the door locks.

Sometimes this will leave me missing my morning train.

Close and Double Locked Door At Night – I worry that the doors are not locked. (Obsess) This one is tricky. I have two doors that enter into my place. The front door and the one that leads to a basement. The basement door is usually an easy one to remain calm about, because I can see all of the locks easily, however the front door leads to a vestibule with another door, this other door is the actual door that leads to the street. As such, I can see the inner door being locked, but what about that second door – is it still locked? I locked it when I came in, but how do I know that it didn’t magically become unlocked? (Obsessive Behavior).

I will get up numerous times a night, before I go to bed to check the status of these locks. (Compulsive behavior). At times I will be in bed trying to fall asleep but can’t simply because I am still worrying about those locks magically unlocking.

Where Are My Keys? – If they’re not in my pocket or hand, where are they? Are they still on top of my dresser? Did I leave them in the keyhole of the front door? (Obsessive Behavior)

This causes me to constantly check my dresser to see if my keys were magically hidden my some unknown force, as well as make me go to the front door, open it up, and check to make sure that there are in fact no keys remaining inside the keyhole. (Compulsive Behavior)

Did I Set The Alarm Clock? – This one I’m beginning to concur. I used to set it before I went to bed and then worry whether or not I remembered to set the alarm. (Obsessive Behavior)

This would cause he to have to sit up, get my glasses and look at the clock. (Compulsive Behavior) This usually ruins that first initial comfy spot that I had when lying down.

I found out that if I set my alarm a few hours before I go to bed, I will be able to check it once when I’m in bed, and then be done with it – although I would have checked it again before I laid down, so in reality I do check it twice.

Somehow I feel as though this is me to win in this situation – let me keep believing my own lie…

I’m sure there are other obsessive compulsive behaviors that I don’t even realize that I do, and trust me when I say that these are only the tip of my neurosis.

On a side note, most people will say that they feel as thought they are a true New Yorker after living here for a year or two, I feel that they shouldn’t judge by time alone, but instead do some math that combines time spent in and how neurotic they have become from living in this city.

Now I’ll go worry about repercussions of posting such truths.

This morning on the subway when a member of One Legged Americans Local 314 sat down across from me on my morning commute. I’ve seen this guy before, but this time I made a realization that part of the reason that I somehow get off mentally by seeing a person with a prosthetic leg in public is the fear that it brings me.

It’s like a cheesy horror movie that sucks me into it every time, and makes me yelp with fear from someone opening a door and finding a guy in cheesy makeup and holding a rubber knife, only in this case it is fear of limbs falling off.

The thing is when I see someone sit or walk with only one original leg mere feet away from me makes all anxious and scared. I tend to obsess that the individual with the prosthetic will accidentally move the wrong way, thereby making his leg fall off, with a loud suction pop, and then flop horrifically on the floor – at which point everyone will look at each other in horror with the thoughts of not knowing what the proper way of helping the individual is to do since nobody having ever helped someone whose leg just fell off up off of the floor.

It’s not like when an elderly person drops their cane and you pick it up, hand it to them and go about your day. You can’t just pull someone up off the floor with one leg, hand their other leg back to them, brush off their shoulders, say “You okay?” then turn around and walk away – I least I can’t.

For some reason my mind has helping a one legged person to be way too complex for me to most likely actively help in such a situation if it ever arose. I know that I am most likely incorrect in my thinking, but I tend to automatically think that I would have to be the one to help by sliding the prosthetic through the limp pant leg, and then have to feel around to place the leg onto the stump, which may or may not require the use of an additional tool, maybe a socket wrench?

In any case it just seems way too complicated, and I wish that there was a CPR type of class that teaches everyday people how to help people when their prosthetic leg falls off.

I realize that this fear is a combination of both my being naïve in not having ever really known someone with a prosthetic, and ignorance in that legs don’t just fall off, and that there isn’t really a One Legged Americans Union, let alone a local 314, but what if they do, and what if there is… I think my head would explode.