So I have this thing where I’m really empathetic all the time and I feel ALL the emotions. Even when I’m not trying to, I always find myself inadvertently mustering up at least some degree of empathy for everyone in every situation ever.
In real life this is usually a positive trait, as it allows me to have things like “compassion for others.” And understanding. And melodramatic bonding sessions with overemotional female friends who are going through ugly breakups with major douche bags who have no regard for women’s feelings but whose sides of the story I can also understand and relate to on some level, because again, empathy.
It’s a whole thing, and both my mom and new age wisdom tell me it means I might be an Earth Angel.
(OMG like Nicolas Cage in City of Angels? Which, I mean – his name is Nicolas. Without an H just like me. Holy shit. Someone find me a black trench coat and a cynical-yet-soft-on-the-inside doctor who looks like Meg Ryan.)
My high-strung emotional sensitivity can become a big problem, though, when I’m watching television. Because if the thing on the screen is all sad and desolate, then I cry and question the meaning of life. But if it’s super fun and hilarious, then you can probably bet your ass that I’m laughing out loud like the Whoopi Goldberg hyena from Disney’s The Lion King.
Basically I watch TV like a toddler on uppers.
(Side note: I’m not a parenting expert, but you probably shouldn’t give your toddler uppers. Or downers, for that matter. Or heroin. And definitely not Lucky Charms. Actually? Just don’t give them anything. Most toddlers are assholes anyways.)
(Maybe I am a parenting expert?)
So. The other night I was drinking red wine and watching some episodes of Modern Family I had saved on my DVR, and I got to one where the teenage girls Haley and Alex were lugging a mirror down into Haley’s bedroom in the basement and, out of the fucking blue, a possum (or is it opossum? this word is a dick) showed up on the steps behind them.
The reactions of the girls were really funny to me at first, and so I laughed, but then I got a closer look at the possum and my hypersensitivity arrived on cue and I was all, “GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME YOU FILTHY EXCUSE FOR ONE OF GOD’S CREATURES.” And then Alex made a “playing possum” pun and Haley (the ultimate ditz) didn’t get it, but then I paused for a moment and realized that I didn’t get it either, and so I was like, “What the fuck, Alex? Thanks for making me feel stupid.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the episode, Cam’s daughter Lily had lice.
After struggling to keep her away from him by telling her that the carpet he was on was hot lava and then literally putting a cardboard box on her head (this is why I love this show), he eventually decided to travel to the Dunphy house to acquire some lice treatment he was told they had in their basement – at which point I yelled at the television screen, “DON’T DO IT, CAM. THERE’S A POSSUM LURKING!”
But he didn’t listen to me.
So then he went to the house, where Alex and Haley had lost track of the possum after hiding out in Haley’s bedroom for too long and were all like, “Huh. Where did it go? Maybe it went back outside?” and then Cam and Lily started walking down the stairs and then the fucking possum FELL FROM THE CEILING and then I legitimately screamed like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween and threw my arms up in the air in what can only be described as a really, really gay tizzy. Which also happens to be exactly what Cam did.
Except unlike Cam, I had that glass of red wine in my hand.
And, so, THIS:
Amazingly, though, I managed to miss the couch and my rug entirely – which I’m incredibly grateful for, because that would have majorly sucked. So really, in the end, I was touched by an angel. AKA MYSELF.
