Damien

Today I'm gonna take us back in time a bit, all the way to my freshperson year. I was in choir, along with Zoë and Chase. I can't sing for my life, but I tried, and I think I improved a little bit. I first met Chase (who's a year older than me) when I sat next to him in choir. Anyway, my birthday is on June sixth, and Chase and Zoë found this out one day (I don't remember how). This was less than a year after 6-6-06, which (for me) had been preceded by everyone in my middle school pretending(?) to be terrified of me for several months. Chase and Zoë, upon hearing about how people had run in terror whenever I came by, took it upon themselves to keep the tradition going. At this point 6-6-06 was over, and people were pretty sure that if the devil was planning on destroying the world in one massive attack, he had picked another (less obvious) date. Nonetheless, they thought it would be funny to continue pretending to be scared; hence, I soon got the nickname Damien. To be honest, it was annoying for the first few days, but I soon got over that and realized that it was actually kind of funny. Eventually I began to have some fun with it: once I messed with the timer on my watch until I managed to get it to stop at 6.66 seconds, then made a big deal of wondering what time it was, being shocked, and showing Chase. My favorite of all, however, involves a particular song we were singing in choir at the time: Brighten My Soul with Sunshine. It talks about how hard it is to keep going, and asks (presumably Harvey) to...well, insert the title here. One of the lines says "The devil's calling and he's pulling hard." The first time that line came up after the Damien thing started, everyone involved suddenly found it difficult not to burst out laughing in the middle of the song. Every single time after that, at least three people (spread out around the room) would turn and glare at me for the entire duration of the line. I took to slapping Chase's arm (I still sat next to him, mind you, so he was the only one I could reach) to discourage him. As I said, I also found it hilarious, but letting them know that would have ruined all the fun.

On a somewhat related note, I've recently come across an interesting idea that may help explain why some people get annoyed with my sense of humor, and I'd really appreciate your opinion. I tend to tire of jokes much less quickly than most people. Hence, I'll be saying an old line long after others have lost interest and still find it hysterical. (I mean I just found 14 relevant links in like ten minutes.) This was one of those cases: everyone else let the Damien thing go long before it had (in my opinion) worn out. Do you think that's true? I'm really curious about this...please leave me a comment and tell me what you think!