Movie Night.

I sat in the back seat on the way home from the movie. We left later than anyone, because that’s what we do. We stand around in the parking lot, shuffling our feet on the slightly icy asphalt, the grinding of the small pebbles making music to grit your teeth to. Eventually, we always leave, though it seems never before it gets a little awkward. I was in the back seat, my sister was driving, her tall boyfriend in the passenger seat, ensuring I had effectively no room, so I cram myself in diagonally, not that I really care, because I just want to get home and I’ll take whatever I can get. I probably could’ve driven, but I wasn’t feeling it. I was in the back seat, crosswise, singing emphatically along with my buddy John Mayer, lustily crooning the situationally awkward words to ‘Your Body Is a Wonderland’, with my sister and her boyfriend in the front seat. They are trying to have a conversation, but with my singing, it’s tough to maintain. They attempt to involve me in the conversation, mostly, I think, out of a desire to stop me from singing. Their ploy works, but I’m in one of those moods where straight answers are no fun, so the conversation is likely more frustrating than the singing was. Those moods just seem to appear, always late, after the situations where I would love to be aloof and spontaneous. My sister asks me if she thinks mom would be upset if she just went to stay at a friends house without telling. My inner-thought response is ‘Yes, you moron.’ But I know I needn’t say that. ‘Probably.’ We both go inside the house, she to my parents room, me to mine, almost exactly opposite in the makeup of our 1950’s four-level split. It’s just a few minutes past midnight, and I know I should go to bed. My sleeping patterns haven’t been as I would like them lately, mostly because I manage to whittle away countless hours on the Internet. I know everyone talks about the internet as this great device, and how it’s going to bring the world together into this fantastic, loving, global village, but I no longer buy that shit. Social networking websites are replacing our ability to network socially in real life; reading blogs and exchanging comments are the new conversations, having a group blog is like a party, looking at each others pictures simulate being there while we do all of this. But, I digress. My room is cold on the floor. It always is. Being in the basement and in the northwest corner of the house my room is a little like a prison cell. More like solitary confinement, I suppose. One bed, six feet of living space, and drafty. I’m sitting at my desk; it’s much too large for my room, taking up a sixth of the space, but I like it. It’s from IKEA, and every time I look at it I try to remind myself that it’s not what I want. I don’t want that IKEA-purchasing, consumer-driven, all-you-can-eat lifestyle. How can we possibly convince ourselves that is what our life should be? My laptop sits on my desk¬–a purchase I try to justify by being a student–begging me to join it for internet fun times. I dabble around on the web for a few minutes, check my email, check my blog, check my mySpace, check Bloglines for new posts, check my other blog, check my other mySpaces, check the stats on my blog, check my other email addresses, and eventually wind up on YouTube, watching clips from The OC. I’m just getting into the scene when Ryan is about to try and kill his brother Trey when I hear a scratchy/knocky noise coming from what I immediately think is the large room adjacent to mine. My heart kicks into high gear, but I don’t do anything. The noise comes again, and this time I’m ready for it, straining to identify it, and I realize it’s coming from somewhere closer, my own room even. I look up to see a dark hand scratching and tapping on the screen of my window, and this frightens me. Of course, my room is filled with light, and it’s dark outside, so I’m left staring at a large, dark silhouette, crouching in the snow outside my window.