You know how sometimes you just get that itch to do, or say. something weird just to entertain yourself with people's reactions? Margret did. A lot. And she did it a lot too.

You see, Margret's interactions with society were a bit limited by the “in progressness”of her situation. She saw society as something. A thing. Something to be interacted with. Not necessarily be a part of. And there in lies a major distinction to be made in how one views the world in which they inhabit. Margret thought of social interaction as a curious experiment. Other than the minimal number of players that had a serious role in her life, society was something she generally believed herself not a part of. And therefore free of its restrictions.

Margret had a vast collection of eccentric socks of which she liked to show off. She was also a fan of blue bathrobes, and slippers. For going places such as the grocery store late at night, or the bookstore, this would be considered acceptable attire. Though take care not to forget the powder and the eyeliner.

As her thoughts slipped across impossible paths each day, she would take the choice tidbits that occurred to her and post them to one of those social networking sites. She was dying to know what people thought of the kind of kooky lout she was. And she was a lout. But, also, a valid kook. She especially love posting things after a few glasses of wine and valium because she knew it was probably a bad idea, and would therefore produce interesting effects to be observed, or even just inflicted. She prided herself on the cleverness of her observations, if not the coherency of them. She wasn't really socially well-adjusted, but she was adjusted in her own way.

While she desperately wanted to know what people thought of her personally, Margret had a surprising amount of disregard for how people viewed her en masse. This invariably led to some awkward encounters, but she'd long been accustomed to that feeling when in the presence of others. Since society was something she considered removed from herself, she had learned to shrug of the chains of shame. As long as there were those few choice people that got her, that was exactly the amount she needed to be exactly who she was.

To the walls, it just looked as though she had the attention span of a gnat. And cognitive processes that did not make any more sense than braille on touchscreen ATMs.

However in times of great turmoil, she was an ace, and rationale was her greatest ally. She had grown up timing her revelations at advantageous times. On one occasion when she was having a full-on, someone-banging-on-the-door-in-the-middle-of-the-night and crying for help, episode, she still had the startling clarity of mind that perhaps this would be a good time to break the news to her dad that she had started smoking by whipping out a cigarette and lighting it up in the house. She needed one and she knew he wouldn't be focused on being mad about that when bigger, more dangerous things, were afoot. She much handled it the same way when confessing she did drugs. She was going big. She was going for the worry factor again. Cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, prescription drugs. She wasn't going to get in trouble just because Dad found out she smoked a little pot. While the rehab program that ensued is understood, how the course of these events had talked her into a tattoo, underage, and with the with parental consent from a man who was still in dismay over the third holes she had gotten pierced in her ears, but that he had failed to even notice for six months, is unknown. When disaster hit, she was in survival-with-the-best-repercussions mode. The other half of the time she was in wanting-to-be-non-existent mode.

But if there was no real turmoil involved, she was completely cut off from caring beyond being either amused or annoyed.

And now, currently, she was actually concerned with making connections. Being in progress, it was bound to come up eventually. Whether she would take to it for long was neither here nor there. Exchanges that had come up in conversation with new people would only murk up the waters while the jury was out. While in company of known and unknown people Margret would remark without pause, “The lady that runs that place is a CUNT.” Then, another member of the party would speak up, “That's my mom.” Not knowing to handle a situation like this she decided to plow ahead in the downward direction she was already going and offer, “Well, she really is a bitch,” without any further apology. But luck was on Margret's side and the young man would inform her he knew. His mom really was a bitch. They bonded.

On another occasion she would drive 3 hours out of town for the weekend to help a friend and her old man clean up their place because it was so bad they were doing dishes in the bathtub. She would make that apartment sparkle, though she herself lived in a disaster of sorts. By the end of the weekend, everything was back to the way it was before she had set to work. Months later when they dropped her off at her home after a wedding, the husband wished to come in and use the bathroom. Staring at all the yet unpacked boxes from moving, he would comment, “Wow, looks like someone needs to clean up in here.” No one bonded then. In fact, Margret would then indulge in some passive-aggressive release and use the sport-coat he left behind to clean up a mess the cat left charmingly to be taken care of, and throw it away. The walls agreed he was an asshole. It was also their considered opinion that his wife was not much to speak of, or well of at any rate, either. After all, she got drunk and peed herself in the living room that one time. Margaret hadn't been in much better shape that night, getting locked in a bathroom stall so gone she couldn't make out how to manipulate the latch on the door. Someone had to crawl under the stall door and unlatch it for her. But, she hadn't peed herself.

So it was that dealing with people was complicated. And so it was that she would just get the most uncontrollable urges to throw a wrench in the spokes at times. After another sleepless night that would only find consolation during the daylight hours there would come a knock at the door. Distrustful of people that knocked on doors unannounced, she opened it with caution. A lady and small boy immediately wedged them into the tiny crack Margret had made between the door and the wall to tell her that, “Jesus loved her.” Thrown off by this unanticipated assault, she would haltingly tell the woman, “Jesus may love me. He may love you too. But I don't, and you can't be here.” Then she proceeded to call the apartment leasing office to have the god-solicitors removed from the property. After a youth spent growing up in the suburbs of Provo, Utah and being the one child in a million who had to suffer the affliction of not being Mormon, and then later growing up to get the fuck out of dodge, she had spent over a decade preparing what she would do if she ever got the chance to stick it to “the man.” And apparently, the man had her name, number, and address. The next time this happened she was not so brave and turned out the lights and grabbed a knife from the kitchen and hid on the other side of door, crouching.