Today, I took a one-person poll: I spent two hours and seventeen minutes on AOL, reading and typing instant messages, emails, or message board posts; wrote or typed close to 2100 words, not counting this essay or my Algebra homework; spoke for about one hour total; watched television for twenty-three minutes; and read thirteen pages in various books, excluding school assignments. I’m either neurotic or addicted to all kinds of human correspondence. I’m most likely both, but for the purposes of this essay, I’ll have to choose the latter option. If I was placed in isolation because I had a viciously contagious disease, I’d be intensely and disgustingly miserable, even if said disease didn’t cause me large amounts of physical pain. I have a craving to interact with other people, to exchange ideas and opinions. I pray I won’t be reincarnated as a wall, because I do so love this gift of communication.

I began talking when I was about fourteen months old, and I haven’t stopped since. Sometimes I get to the point where my words come out so fast that I don’t even know what I was saying. My incensed rants go on for so long my opinion is dismissed and I’ll end my speech with a half-hearted, “You know what I mean? Well, I dunno, but whatever”. I’m attempting to think a little deeper before I blurt out something, truly I am. As said by Anotole France, “The more you say, the less people remember.”

I’m not narcissistic; I do listen to people other than myself. Sometimes not even the actual words they are speaking, but the way they say those words. I have a tendency to eavesdrop in crowded areas, if only to hear the texture of someone’s voice, the emphasis they’ll put on a syllable, or even their choice of vocabulary. I’m quite the linguaphile.

After listening to people speak all the time, their speech choices become embedded into my subconscious. Take the word “kicknazi” for example. This is not a real word, but nonetheless, it is used regularly by a friend of mine. She uses it to imply that something is excellent, such as “This bagel is kicknazi!” One day, I was updating my website with a review of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, when this delightful little adjective flew from the keyboard to the screen without any conscious thought of mine. I sat stunned for a moment. I had stolen someone’s word! Cries of “Plagiarist! Scallywag! Thief! COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!” burst into my mind.

“No, mate!” I pleaded, “No! I didn’t mean to!” I fell down on my knees before the computer, my index finger poised over the BACKSPACE button. I was fighting a battle: my logical, law-abiding side against my inspired, slightly kooky artiste side. Kooky Artiste understood that we artistes must communicate and share our ideas in order to grow and “drink up, me hearties, yo-ho!” Legally Law-Abiding just wanted to be dully stringent in order to squash Kooky’s freedom of eclectic expression.

Kooky Artiste tried to defend herself, “But it’s such a pretty word!” Kooky shook her many-ringed fist in indignation, her pirate medallions jangling about her neck and her tie-dyed eye-patch slipping off.

After much swashbuckling and verbal cannon-fire, Logical Law-Abiding (clad in nondescript clothing and boring stainless steal jewelry) eventually gave in to the kicknazi wiles of Kooky with, “No, you’re breaking the—Arr . . . It’s so pretty! But why is the rum gone?” Ahem.

The BACKSPACE button was abandoned and I returned to my sane, mono-personality self. I wasn’t a very good schizophrenic pirate anyway.

But my days as a vocabulary hijacker actually began with a wonderful thing called fanfiction: the strange phenomenon that is flourishing in this time of high-speed internet access, long periods between Harry Potter books, and the cancellation of great television series. Voracious readers and viewers are always yearning for more after they finish the newest (or final) installment. In order to lull the withdrawal, they . . . continue writing the stories themselves! Alternate universes (Harry lives in Antarctica), unlikely romances (Darth Vader marries Chewbacca), and life-altering depression sagas (Buffy has to kill Angel . . . again) abound on the website FanFiction.Net. It was here I realized that writing a complete story didn’t have to be hard. “Look at what all these people accomplished: thirty-chapter epics – with sequels!” I exclaimed gleefully to myself. It was through this site that I became a real writing addict. Not just fanfiction, but original writings, too. I would be found typing at my computer for two or three hours a week, ideas pouring out through my fingertips. Writing helped channel my thoughts into linear form, which, in theory, should have helped me speak in a linear form. Sadly, such a development has yet to occur, but I’m still trying.

So, when I feel ready to burst from pent-up teenage angst, and my sentences become less and less lucid, I turn to that age-old art of acting. There is satisfaction in pretending to be someone else, to successfully communicate to an audience that character’s emotions. The adrenaline rush I get at the performance’s end is awesome, but I feel just as ecstatic when I’m on the other side of the curtain. I love to delve into another world, to witness situations and conflicts that don’t usually arise in my everyday life. Such an experience is not just unique to theater – I am thoroughly obsessed with all things cinema (excluding Vin Diesel, The Cat in the Hat, and bad sequels). The amount of time and effort these people take to present enjoyment for the viewing public is astounding. I aspire to appear in a movie one day, whether it's my face, my camera angles, or my set design. I can hear the praise now: “It’s such a pretty sof—I mean, chaise lounge. Gorgeous, gorgeous! More, more!”

As evidenced by this rather random essay, I do so adore communication, even the disjointed and uneven kind. Everyone should share the correspondence love. One must only think of a world without social interaction. Imagine a regular Joe waiting in line at the BUREAU OF BIRTH for hours and hours, filling out mountains of paperwork and taking the birth-canal-navigation test three times before he comes out head first. He finally gets his Birth License, but to discover that not only has he not entered the world kicking and screaming, he’s entered the world as a sedimentary rock! He can’t even complain about the pond scum growing on him or tell the other rocks his awesome idea for a Little Mermaid fanfiction. He is even unable reveal neurotic statistics about his environment! Joe just have to sit there, unable to do anything because he doesn’t have cells, and without cells, he can’t have a brain or a mouth, so he can’t possibly have any ideas or any means in which to share them! Such is the existence of a non-sentient, non-communicating rock. Not quite so kicknazi, now is it?