repeating behaviours

If I were a bet­ting man, I would bet on re­peat­ing be­hav­iours in hu­mans.

If I am walk­ing down the street, and hear peo­ple con­vers­ing be­hind me, and one of them says, “fuck” one time, I start count­ing “fucks.”

One chim­panzee. Two chim­panzee. I bet that this in­di­vid­ual will say “fuck” or “fuck­ing” six, eight or twelve times in a minute.

This also works with the words “amaz­ing,” “awe­some,” the phrase “Omigod!” and, of course, the ubiq­ui­tous “like.” As in, “I’m like, what­ev­er!” And she’s like, “For­get it!” I’m like, dis­gust­ed.

Al­though one of my fa­vorite pas­times, eaves­drop­ping is a dou­ble sided coin.

In or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, lis­ten­ing to these ad­dlepat­ed cretins hap­pi­ly re­in­forces my feel­ings of in­tel­lec­tu­al su­pe­ri­or­i­ty.

But in San Fran­cis­co, I chanced to over­hear the fol­low­ing: “I’m go­ing to a Car­bon Par­ty!” Lat­er, the same speak­er de­scribed rain as “at­mos­pher­ic riv­er.”

Ap­par­ent­ly, even weath­er can be brand­ed. I ex­pe­ri­ence a whole new kind of trep­i­da­tion, tinged with in­se­cu­ri­ty.
 

—lau­rie rosen­wald

Flom­mist Lau­rie Rosen­wald is an Amer­i­can il­lus­tra­tor, au­thor, artist, and de­sign­er. Copy­right © 2019 Lau­rie Rosen­wald.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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