NervousMan Thinks about Negativity

NervousMan walked along the streets downtown. Thinking.

NervousMan watched his black shoes fall on the gray pavement in front of him over and over and over.

Outside of the Safeway store, a man in a white suit rang a bell next to a bucket which rested on a small table.

"He is collecting money for some sort of charity", thought NervousMan.

The man smiled at NervousMan and rang his bell twice and said something which NervousMan did not hear. NervousMan walked on by, looking down. NervousMan's stomach felt a little queasy all of a sudden. NervousMan frowned.

Why was NervousMan so nervous?

NervousMan wanted to be as balanced and healthy as he could be. He didn't want to get too nervous. "But," NervousMan thought, "I need a certain amount of negativity going on in my head at any given time. Moreso than the average person, perhaps".

NervousMan liked his negativity. Negativity grounded NervousMan to the quote-unquote real world, he realized.

After all, just about everyone NervousMan was around was negative 24/7.

NervousMan looked around at the faces of those around him on the street. So many of them seemed to be frowning at NervousMan.

Here was a gray-haired man with slumped shoulders and a downcast face carrying two sagging plastic bags of groceries. Here, an old Asian woman with a scarf on her head and a dour expression, walking with a cane.

And here... on the corner, a young couple embracing each other. Smiling and laughing.

Why couldn't NervousMan be like the young man in that couple, thought NervousMan. It must be nice to have a girlfriend. Maybe a girlfriend would make NervousMan less nervous. But to have a girlfriend, he would have to talk to girls.

And doing that, made NervousMan nervous.

NervousMan didn't like to be nervous.

NervousMan passed another young lady who was jogging. In her hand was a leash for her dog which ran next to her. It looked like there was a red rubber band around the dog's mouth. "Probably to keep it from biting and snapping at people," thought NervousMan.

It seemed like negativity was reality to NervousMan. The only 'positivity' or humor seemed to come from the TV and movies and entertainment things, if anywhere at all.

But most of the time those things were negative too.

Walking along the street, looking at the smears in the sidewalk, NervousMan was suddenly caught by the deep blue of a storefront. He saw that he was standing in front of a Blockbuster Video store.

Having nothing else to do, he went inside.

Along the walls of the store were all sorts of shiny and colorful boxes for DVD's. But so many of the boxes seemed to be about scary things. Negative things. Chainsaws and killers and guns and whatnot.

NervousMan picked up one box which depicted a man holding a spear menacingly out at whoever happened to be looking at the box at the time. NervousMan looked at it. The man's face was a mean sneer. The title's lettering seemed to be in bright, smeared blood.

"How terrible", thought NervousMan. And frowned.

NervousMan watched a clerk putting boxes back on the shelf. The clerk smiled softly to himself, not noticing NervousMan.

How would it be to work at Blockbuster video, NervousMan thought. To be around the scary boxes all day long?

The thought of that made NervousMan nervous.

How could he escape such negative things?

Walking out of the store, NervousMan imagined himself in social situations, like parties, or at a job like at Blockbuster, or out in public. Places where NervousMan so-called 'had' to be positive. He found those situations to be extremely stressful.

Because even if NervousMan could 'pass' for being 'positive', he was afraid he would be afraid of, at any moment, opening his mouth, and saying something negative, and getting busted.

This prospect caused NervousMan to be quite nervous.

NervousMan walked past a bus stop and looked at the lined and dirty faces of the poor people waiting for the bus to arrive. The people frowned at NervousMan.

Walking on, NervousMan thought, "In social situations I will just stay quiet just in case I would say something negative, and just hope that no one would talk to me".

But, thought NervousMan, that wouldn't be very social.

NervousMan sighed. Why was everything so hard? What was wrong with NervousMan?

Lately, NervousMan noticed, he had been going around in black. Black shirt, black shoes, black coat, black hair, black sunglasses. Maybe some days NervousMan had even gone so far to have black socks and black underwear too.

NervousMan had been a little 'goth' lately.

No, he didn't go in for the black fingernails or eyeliner or whatever. NervousMan wasn't a 'joiner'.

A woman with bright red hair and a yellow dress smiled at NervousMan from in front of a Starbuck's. But NervousMan didn't notice.

NervousMan thought "my black clothes are all a reaction to certain people trying to 'positize' me". Yes, 'positize'.

Perhaps NervousMan had made a new word.

People trying to get NervousMan to 'cheer up' freaked NervousMan out.

NervousMan didn't want to freak out, and he never did. But NervousMan thought about freaking out.

NervousMan thought about everything.