pull it!
When in New Orleans, over dinner with friends, one of them mentioned that “there are people who see a fire alarm and have to stop themselves from pulling it, and there are people who never ever think about it.” Everyone at the table seemed confused, and then he looked at me and said something like “ah see-Jenny knows what I am talking about.”
Oh and I totally do, I had just never thought about it. I ALWAYS want to do that thing. I just thought everyone did. This has come up recently because although I am in NO WAY suicidal, I have to keep myself from throwing myself off the subway platform. When I think through throwing myself off the subway platform, obviously it seems only unpleasant. But still, I sort of want to.
I really don’t like what I call “unsecured heights.” IE in a building on the 80th floor is great, on its roof on the 81st with no guardrails is bad. And I just realized this is because I know how much I will get the feeling to jump off, just because I am there, again, not because I have any interest in killing myself.
So on Friday I went to MOMA and this bizarre compulsion was translated into wanting to touch paintings. Whenever I am at an art museum I really want to touch paintings. I have only once (nothing happened! woo!) and I have gotten close enough to try another time (and was chastized). But at MOMA I really want to touch the Malevich:
So what does this weird compulsion to lawbreak or dangerous thing in social situations signify? Anyone care to let me lie down on their couch?
7 Comments so far
1. amy wrote on October 1st, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Hey, did you see this while you were there?
Because I really wanted to touch that.
2. jenny wrote on October 1st, 2006 at 4:09 pm
no i did not see that. i woul have wanted to touch it tho!
3. Chad wrote on October 1st, 2006 at 4:25 pm
I once was interviewed by my doctor when I was, like, 16 or so and he asked me a battery of questions to assess my health. Being a hollistic doctor, he asked, “Have you ever had suicial thoughts?” Huh? I thought about it and decided to tell the truth to a nearly total stranger. “Um. Actually, sometimes when I’m driving and there’s a cement median, I think about just not turning and going over it into the opposite lane, just to see what happens. Is that weird?” He gave the best answer I’ve ever had to this. “Actually, that’s normal.”
Personall, I’ve never wanted to touch a painting, but working with little kids, I heard that a teacher went on a field trip to the museum and, after the docent introduced herself and gave some museum-etiquette points to the group about not touching things, one of the kids was caught touching a painting. The teacher, shocked at the brazenness, took the student aside and reminded her specifically about what the docent had said and told her, “The next time, you’re going to spend the rest of the time with the police.” About five minutes later, the teacher looked over and the kid looked directly at her and touched another painting! Apalled, the kid spent the rest of the trip in the security guard booth waiting for her class. That’s the little kid version of what could happen…I’ve never seen what happens to adults who do this. Is it like “department store jail” for security guards who catch shoplifters?
I’m wondering if you also want to bang the table where a Scrabble game is being saved until later…
4. MsMolly wrote on October 2nd, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Ask Metafilter had an entire thread recently about what to call that urge. I think Poe named it best by calling it “the imp of the perverse”.
5. MsMolly wrote on October 2nd, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Duh! I meant to link to the thread. Read it here.
6. jennybento wrote on October 3rd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
interesting–it’s less that i wonder what will happen and more that i just want to do whatever it is without caring what the consequences are.
7. jennybento wrote on October 8th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
chad–an interesting story….i will stick to the story that i have stendhal syndrome…
did we meet at ala?