Excuse me, but I'm not so sure we're paranoid so much as prescient when it comes to wondering and worrying about what people might be thinking of us. I think the thing that sets us apart from most other Americans and makes it hard to find any understanding or resonance about this is that most people haven't been held captive and tortured for years based on their neurotic parents' and other allegedly responsible adults' highly unpleasant flights of fancy and gossip about them.
In other words, what they thought of us and the fact that they found support for their fantasies among ther fellow toughlove hategroup members. Sometimes, people act on those thoughts. Ask any jewish person who's family came over from Germany before or during WWII if it's irrational to worry about what people think of you.
Is it paranoid, Str8survivorVA, to wonder and worry just a little what that nut case, John Poindexter, might be doing with all that data he's collected in his data mining projects? Is Judge Anna Diggs Taylor paranoid for worrying about what the Büsh people might make of the data they've collected illegally on international communications?
It's frustrating sometimes. I'm so keen to these things that ppl around me don't even notice. I always go hyper vigilant whenever an officer of the law approaches me or shows interest, having been cuffed and stuffed a few times early on in life.
Not too long ago, the whole family got pulled over inside a county park. This particular park is patroled by park police who have put on the Wackenhut colors; dark green and gold on a white field--same colors as Broward and most of the other high population counties in Florida, as well as Los Angeles and a few others I've noticed on the news from time to time. Can't remember what he pulled us for, some lame excuse like going 5 mi over the spd limit or some such.
But I had a decent vantage point from the passenger seat in that I could see most of his body, but not his face. More importantly, he couldn't observe my face or track what I was looking at, so I was free to focus on what I could see unselfconciously. Just as he came up to the window, I saw his posture tense and his hand go to the ready position near his holster. I just about pissed my pants. Then he relaxed right away and reverted to a SOP posture and demeanor. [whew!]
I don't know what set him off, Bill's beard and somewhat mideastern looking features, maybe? Maybe just that we had the girls' boyfriends with us and tinted windows, so he realized or sensed that he was outnumbered 3-1 by healthy adult males when he probably was expecting a van full of women and children. Maybe something subliminal that the cop wouldn't even have been able to put a finger on. Who the hell knows?
But no one else in the car even noticed. Good thing, too, cause I got the distince impression that it was Bill's demeanor that put the guy at ease. Good thing I wasn't driving or we might have found out what was on the guy's mind. Everybody else had a pretty good time that day, tossing the football around and such. I tried hard to enjoy it, but it was too late. I spent the entire afternoon moving beer cans behind other objects so they couldn't be easily seen by passers by, looking around for clues as to why the park police seemed to be extra vigilant and trying to figure out what they were up to, etc.