Unsolicited Advice

I am completely incapable of finding something interesting without also wanting to know exactly how it works. Not just physical objects like toys, or mechanical processes like figure skating and hooping, but also abstract things like linguistic structures and social scripts. I'm willing to do the kind of obsessive research you need to make this work, so the fact that this is weird normally doesn't bother me much. The most troublesome part is that I keep unintentionally convincing people that I'm the local expert in something I've only been cramming into my head for a few weeks, which can get awkward. At least by that point, I can direct them to other people who know a lot more than I do. I also do it in personal relationships, which has the unfortunate side effect of confusing and annoying other humans. I gather they feel that anyone who wants to scrutinize interaction in that much detail is determined to find fault with whatever's going on. I think it's just ...

The house was always a menagerie while I was growing up. My mother couldn't turn away an animal. Several times, we had neighborhood people ring the doorbell to ask if a kitten wandering around stray was ours. If it wasn't before, it was now. The minimum complement was two cats and two dogs, plus any small caged critters we had lying about, but it ranged much higher than that at times -- one of the cats escaped for the night before we could get her into the spay/neuter clinic, and we briefly had ten of them, before the babies were weaned and re-homed. Have you ever been in a house with ten cats? It's an adventure. My father had to check his size 13 work boots every morning before putting them on, in case a kitten had decided to nap inside. The dogs were generally fewer in number, but made up for it in mass. Right around the time I was born, my parents had a dog named Yeti. It was apt. He was half Lab, half husky, with mismatched eyes, and completely indestructible. He wa...