Changing your routine; paranoia or common sense?

Paranoia. But I want my daughter to do it.

You shouldn’t really worry until they make you a fake Twitter profile.

I am always paranoid for some reason. I do the same thing as you do, Blue.

At night, I always check the back seat of the car too – paranoia? Most likely but you just never know.

I carry my keys in my hand ready to slash the slasher while walking to the car park late at night – paranoia? Again, probably but you never know who might be hiding in the bushes.

I look in my backseat before getting in. I have my key ready to get into my car. I do try to leave my house at different times of day since I have the luxury of not working. I don’t worry about different routes when driving, but in the past when I would walk a lot I would change routes at times, but most important to me was not leaving the house at the same time consistently. I don’t do all of eat 100% of the time, but they are precautions I am aware of and utilize. It freaks me out that in two of my cars I cannot start the car immediately because the seat is too far back for me to put the clutch in when I first get into the driver’s seat. One of my cars both doors open (it is a two door car) with one click of the remote, which I don’t like either. I wonder if it can be changed? That remote only has one button to lock and unlock, it is awful. I figure some idiot male, German, engineering guy living in a town that probably has close to zero crime decided that was a good idea. My contact at my dealership says tons of women complained about it and they stopped making the keys that way. Duh.

Horror films, true crime programmes and the television news make us think the world is a much more dangerous place than it actually is. They make us fearful and fear is a dangerous emotion. Having said that I do check the back seat of a car before driving off.

I don’t check the backseat of the car. It’s never occurred to me. I’m not really paranoid with situations.

I am a bit paranoid with people. A young guy from the neighborhood rang my elderly mother-in-laws bell the other day. He was offering to fix a crack in her front steps. I happened to be in the kitchen and over heard her at the door talking to him. I immediately went to the door -“What’s your name?! Where do you live?! What, exactly, do you want?!” I think I scared the shit out of the guy, but I’m just very cautious about folks preying on elderly people (or children).

As population density increase, the probability for someone with evil intent to cross paths with you increases. I did not have a lock on my front door thirty years ago. Then, everyone in our small city knew everyone in the neighborhood and most kids wouldn’t think of entering someone’s home without being invited. Things are very different today. With some 17,000 people living here, and with the great disparity of economic means that exists (over 50% of our children require free meals provided at school and over 20% of adults unemployed) it is not paranoia to be fearful.

Never crosses my mind, I have enough other things to angst about.

I check my back seat ever since an incident in 1980. I was night manager/dispatch/driver for a 24 hour day-labor office located downtown in a major city. Usually the job was to tally up the day’s payroll, but occasionally I would get an emergency call from a client who needed personnel asap.

One night I had a run to make, which kept me out of the office until about 11pm. I locked up and went into the office to finish up the books. At about 2 am, I finished and got into the van to go home. I noticed the van smelled like someone who hadn’t bathed regularly, but didn’t think anything of it, many of our employees were homeless, or nearly so. So I proceeded to roll the window down, crank up the radio and proceed homeward. About 10 minutes into the trip, I was startled by, “Hey, man, do you think you could take me back downtown? I want to be there when the mission opens up for breakfast!”

AS of last night, I had a baited mouse-sized Havahart in the backseat of my Forester. I have been deliberately avoiding looking at it this morning until I have breakfasted.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone is not out to get you. Caution always makes sense.

Arrah, not at all!

Sometimes, after reading a spy novel, I’ll think this way, but not enough to actually do anything. I might change my route to work, but that’s really for variety, with the added advantage of foiling kidnappers. I never check to see if anyone is in the back seat.

Who would want to get me? I’m sorry, but I’m really not very important to anyone outside my family. No one knows who I am. No one knows how much money I have or don’t have. You can’t tell by looking at me because I look pretty frumpy. If someone did decide I had money, that would be my bad luck, because I don’t. So there’s nothing I can do about that.

I think paranoia is something delicious to feel when you want to ramp up the excitement in your life. I think that while there are normal people who may want to ramp up excitement, people with mental illnesses are particularly interested in having the sense that life is intense at the moment. Getting worried about unlikely things is a good way to create that intensity.