Dearest Rachel –
Yesterday, after treating Kris to sushi (we were making good on a rain check from the week before, when she had to run out quickly after finishing her work on the house), Daniel and I made a couple of stops on the way home. They were mostly just ordinary grocery stuff, but we did want to stop by Costco to see if this location – which, despite being there since long before you had to leave, he didn’t seem to be aware of – had any of those chocolate-covered pomegranate bites he’s apparently gotten hooked on. Unfortunately, they didn’t – my guess is that, while each location has some latitude regarding what they stock, most of it is fairly standard, so if the one to the east of our home doesn’t have a place for it, the one to the west isn’t likely to carry it, either. I hope it’s just a seasonality issue, so that when they return, we can just stock up on them.
Once we got home, we put away the few things we’d managed to acquire before dropping into our respective chairs and watching YouTube in the bedroom. We may have each drifted off in turn, after such a large lunch. By the time Logan came downstairs from finishing his workday, and Daniel left to join him, I probably should have taken the opportunity to head out and work some of those calories off, but I just couldn’t work up the motivation to do so. After all, I had taken last Monday off as well, so it wasn’t as if I was going to fall behind my pace from last week. And while I knew that lunch had probably wrecked havoc with my continued efforts to get back to losing weight, I just couldn’t bring myself to head out during the day, knowing that it would be dark by the time I should be returning. Exercise is something to start the day off with, not to end it.
So I remained in my place, vaguely aware of whatever anime it was the boys were watching (I think they just wrapped up with Aggretsuko and were moving on to episodes of Squid Girl –yes, most of the stuff they’re following was around when you were, but you never got the chance to see them through to their conclusion), flipping through my news feed, and eventually switching back to YouTube for some more mindless entertainment. I couldn’t watch something that Daniel would want to see with me, so I just let the algorithm take me wherever it thought I might want to go.
It sent me to some channels I’ve told you about in the past, and some that are new even to me, but by the time Logan called it a night and headed upstairs to bed, Daniel was walking in on me watching stuff that would have been more what he would have expected you to be watching, rather than me.
“Why do you watch that stuff?” he asked, in a tone that honestly felt like the two of us might have swapped the parent and child roles. And at that moment, I didn’t really have an answer for him.
But the more I considered it – and truth be told, some of that thinking came from the stuff we proceeded to watch together thereafter – I might have a theory as to my rationale. No, it’s not like I’m trying to watch stuff that you would have enjoyed simply because I think you would have enjoyed it; I’m not even certain you would have, compared to the sci-fi and horror movies (with actual plots!) that you tended to favor.
You see, one of the channels Daniel and I watch together (which you might vaguely remember, in fact) has a regular (as in, three times a week these days) series where the viewer is challenged not to laugh. Granted, “try not to laugh” challenges are pretty common across the platform, but what makes this one notable is that the host assigns the audience with a punishment for failure (not that anyone ever follows through with the punishments, some of which are pretty absurd) and a reasoning for doing so. The reasoning behind his challenges – which I should mention is stated thoroughly tongue-in-cheek – is that these are rough times, and the viewer needs to take everything seriously. We’re not allowed to find things funny, and certainly not the sort of things offered for mockery on his channel. It’s important to suppress those feelings of mirth, lest you find yourself cancelled for enjoying something you shouldn’t.
The trouble is, there’s a point at which Daniel and I have taken his challenge seriously, and tend to get through his episodes without much more than cracking a smile (although sometimes, one of us will comment on what we’ve just seen, which causes the other to lose their composure; however, since that’s due to each other’s remarks and antics, we’ve agreed that it doesn’t count). The memes he presents my be amusing, but we don’t find ourselves laughing out loud at any of them, thanks to all our practice.
And that’s a bit of a shame; of all the emotions to suppress, humor seems the least healthy to do so to. So, I think that I’m watching these things in order to test my fear and disgust reflexes. I’m intentionally rendering myself insensate to these reactions, because I think those would be better to be able to suppress than, say, laughter.
What do you think, honey? Was that a motive behind your own affection for horror films? I wish I could ask you, and get confirmation one way or another. Although, at the same time, I wonder if you’d actually disapprove of such an objective; developing a nonchalant response to such material might not only take away the ability to appreciate it, but it might inure me toward something like that if it were to happen in real life. It might render me cold to the point of sociopathy, couldn’t it?
In which case, perhaps you’d best keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I dare say, I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 