Preconceived Notions

My training is almost complete. This week is set to be my release week from the seven week training plan I have undergone. A week from tomorrow and I will be on my own, and expected to complete all the tasks I have learned about. No pressure or anything. The money should be nice though. I'm a little nervous, but at the same time, i have been at my store a lot lately, and am growing more comfortable with being there. It's gonna be a slow progression I am afraid, to the point where I really feel comfortable with balancing all the tasks and really feeling like I know what the hell I am doing.

We have found a place in Gallatin, TN, and have already paid our initial deposit down. It's a nice, two bedroom place, spacious, and it has a fireplace. The only down side is that it's on the third floor. But they are pet friendly, aside from asking for a 550 dollar deposit. We will have three paychecks to save money for all these moving expenses. The rent is reasonable. More so than most of the places in the area, especially considering that this place is fairly new, and seems more upscale than most apartments I have looked at. We are excited, although we both hate moving. I found out the other day that because I am moving fifty miles for this job, Walmart is supposed to help me with my moving expenses. I brought this to the attention of my supervisor. Hopefully, they approve me for the help. It seems there was a mixup, and they were supposed to tell me I qualified for this moving assistance, but they didn't. The process of being approved was supposed to be initiated within thirty days of me getting the job, but no one told me I qualified, and I had to find out on my own by accident. So, needless to say, if they try to deny me the help because it's been over thirty days, I am going to be very unhappy. It is hard to initiate a process, if you don't know the process exists.

It's weird how much of a morning person I have become. I am now tired by nine o'clock. Ten thirty and I am dragging ass. It's kind of sad actually. If I want to party, I will have to take a nap now.

The other night, Elizabeth and I went to her friend's graduation party. The first part of the night, we were at a house, drinking beer and socializing. The second part of the night, we went to this trailer out in the middle of NOWHERE. It was in some place near Georgetown, KY called Stamping Ground. The roads leading to this place, were the curviest, tiniest, snake-like roads I have ever been on. It was cool to look up and see a sky full of stars for a change. We sat outside and toasted marshmallows, made smores, and drank beer. Elizabeth and I slept on a blow up mattress in the living room of the trailer. It had been a long time since I had stayed the night in a trailer. Since I was a teenager at least. I have lots of bad memories from my youth revolving around being in a trailer, but none of those were what bothered me about it.

Around four-thirty in the morning I got up and went to the bathroom. I came back and laid down and was almost asleep, despite the non-stop creaks emitting from the floors around me, when CLICK, the light came on in the room. I sat there for a moment with my eyes shut, thinking someone just turned the light on in the kitchen or something, but no one made any sounds like they were up. I opened my eyes. The only light that was on, was a lamp in the corner of the living room. I realized that it had to have been turned on by the knob in its base, and that there was no way anyone had turned it on without walking into the room. I immediately thought that a ghost had turned the lamp on. My body broke out in sweat. Thoughts of the movie Paranormal Activity creeped into my head. I shook Elizabeth awake.

"Hey," I said.

She looked at me groggily. "What?"

"A ghost just turned that lamp on."

"Huh?" she turned and saw it, jumped up and turned it off. "There, I fixed it."

She climbed back into bed. She was asleep in two minutes. I sat there wide awake. I was waiting for the ghost to come back and turn the lamp on again. It didn't. But then I started hearing what I was certain was footsteps in the room. Cold chills ran up and down my spine. I kept thinking I could feel the covers move at my feet and cold breeze-like air, which I thought could be the ghost walking past the foot of the bed. I started wondering if the ghost would lay down in the bed beside me. Then, I heard the bathroom door shut loudly. I was certain that I was not alone in this room. I could not fall asleep until the sun was coming up and light was filtering into the room through the windows.

Later that morning, when people were up and moving about, I said something about the ghost in the room turning the lamp on. Elizabeth's friend laughed at me. The lights were on timers, to make it look like people were home, when no one was there, for security purposes. I felt like an idiot.

Now, the question you should be asking yourself is why, a person as devoted to skepticism as I am, would immediately leap to such an irrational conclusion as a ghost had turned the lamp on, before logically assessing the situation. I think I have some ideas. First of all, there is the fact, that growing up, I was fairly certain the trailer I lived in as a teenager was haunted. I would often wake up in the middle of the night, and hear a sound the seemed to be someone in slippers walking up and down the hallway dragging their feet. My brother said he had also heard that noise, and wondered what it was. I assure you, no one in my family was sleep walking. Secondly, there is the fact, that a couple moths earlier, my brother had told me some stories about weird things going on in his life, and thinking a ghost was harassing him, turning on lights, smacking walls, and such. Thirdly, there is the fact, that ghost stories are widely accepted in our culture, and many people readily believe they exist, despite a lack of physical evidence. So, when that scenario happened, in the middle of the night, when my mind was half asleep, it was very easy for me to skip all rational thought, and leap automatically to something beyond the ordinary, simply because no explanation was available to be seen from my perspective.

When you think about it, this type of mentality could easily be attributed to many things in our culture. The reasons that we jump to such irrational conclusions concerning events that occur in our lives, is simply because those conclusions are accepted by others, and that superstition permeates our society. Miracles, divine intervention, paranormal activity, supernatural forces...all of these things are still accepted because our culture has a history of accepting them. They float about passed by word of mouth and through our literature, to the point that when something happens for which we can see no obvious explanation, our brain automatically relates it to stories we have heard about from other sources. This is our nature. If we see an effect, we need to know its cause. If there is a question posed, we need to know the answer. This trait of our intellect, makes it very hard to weed superstition out of our thought patterns.

At any rate, I would like to say I learned my lesson. Only time will tell. I've been writing this blog the entire time with my head turned around backwards. Demon possession is detrimental to blogging.