It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, why in the Nine Levels of Dante’s Infernal Pit do I have to be everyone’s frigging neighbor? Seriously, I understand the mechanics of how this happened— but it doesn’t mean I like it any the more. I always valued my anonymity, my ability to meld into a crowd and vanish, but Jesus Hydrophobic Christ on a tugboat– I never realized how much I’d miss it once it’s gone.
Believe you me, it hasn’t just gone full Houdini– it’s even worse. I’ve seemed to go full-on Fred fucking Rogers.
Look at that crooked middle finger! It almost seems appropriate with that benevolent Jimmy Carter grin…
Yes indeedy, at first it was an insidious change… once in awhile stumbling over one of my boxholders at Wegmans, or someone’d recognize me on the random happenstance that I went out for a drink… but I quickly realized that it didn’t stop there. I have learned quite quickly that I can’t go anywhere in this general area without someone recognizing me.
This is the point where I invoke the almighty holy-shit-time-out-4th-wall-breaking-power-of-Zack-Morris.
I no longer can be out in public shitfaced, because I have suddenly become the antithesis of the guy nobody saw sober. Instead of being sober and surprising everyone– now people know sober me…. and worse off, sober and stressed to the point of bad puns at work me. This will not fucking do. What in the Lovecraftian concept of fuck is wrong with this picture besides… I don’t know… everything?!
No, today it all came to a head while I was walking home for lunch… one of the local kids (and damned in Hell if I know what the little ginger’s name is) waved and called me by name. Yeah, I know, real cute– right? Oh no, the rest of the kids apparently now know me too.
Yeah, my reaction too.
So yeah, I guess that just cements the fact that I’ve been installed as a fixture in the community… I can no longer get shitfaced where I live, nor near where I live, nor go out in public after the fact… because hey— the last thing I want to deal with is someone who knows me from work trying to talk shop while I’m endeavoring to enjoy a proper buzz and mind my own goddamn business.
Son… of a bitch.
I miss being a ghost, one rarely if never recognized nor seen around my old home town.
Now?
Fuck all kinds of duck.
… and people wonder why I prefer to drink at home for more than just cost-effectiveness and lack of DUI’s.
Unplug.
Snark and Circumstance 
Now you know how I feel. Now I don’t run into so many kids/parents here around town like I did when I was living in IUP, where I could rarely step out of my own apartment without running into kids/parents. However it still sucks running into someone calling your name, and jumping up and down like you’re their best friend.
It’s not as bad when it’s a good kid, but it still smacks you in the face with the fact that your anonymity is as dead as the Ottoman Empire.
[…] lamented recently how I have become a forced hermit due to both location and recognition. Conditions since that post have not changed, in fact– I’ve actually leveraged my […]