chronic people intrest disorder

today i woke up, once again, to the mystery noise that travels down from my upstairs neighbor's apartment and into my ears around 7:30 or 8 a.m. every morning. i have yet to figure out what it is. sometimes i'm for sure that its a sewing machine. other days i can't decide between a washing machine and her repeatedly slamming some piece of furniture on the floor right above my bed. either way, i've grown to have a pretty funny interest in her life. i've made up all sorts of stories in my mind. like what in the world she does all day. school? work? whatever she does, its done whenever i'm away because she's ALWAYS there. always on the phone on her porch. and always jamming some insanely loud music that is so bad that i can tell it sucks just from the deafening bass. i haven't figured out a name for her yet...but that will come soon.

come to think of it...i've always had a serious interest in the lives of other people, even if i'm making them up myself. i have super vivid memories of riding around with my mom in the spaceship van when i was little. if we would pull up to a red light or were on the interstate i would name everyone we passed and wonder what their story was.

i still do this, especially in classes. i think its a way of entertaining myself, and it may be weird but i usually pick a person out in each of my classes and i try to learn as much as possible about them by just listening to the way they interact with people and side comments they say. by the end of the semester i could probably tell you their whole life story. like this girl ashley in my social philosophy class. i can't figure out what her natural hair or skin color is. she kinda looks like the porcelain dolls i used to collect. she uses words i have to look up, and that really pisses me off. like "idiosyncratic." good thing i learned that word in my personality class a couple of weeks ago because this chick likes to use words like this in every day conversation. at this point in the semester i can tell you what campus organizations she's in, where she lives, her speech patterns, nervous habits, and what people thought of her in high school and how she likes for people to think of her now.

is it weird that i know so much about these people that i have no relationship with? personally, i think it comes from this really deep desire to know others. i love to know a person's story, the way they think, and what makes their heart happy or sad. it makes humanity so much more interesting.