It's Kind of a Funny Story: Chapters 1–6

It’s passed to me, wrapped up in a concise delivery system, but I pass it on.

There’s an octopus on the screen with giant ears, translucent, flapping through the water in the cold light of a submersible.

“I’ll be back,” I say, getting up from my spot on the couch, which Scruggs, a friend who was relegated to the floor, immediately claims, slinking up in one fluid motion.

They are sanctuaries, public places of peace spaced throughout the world for people like me.

There’s a disease called Ondine’s Curse, in which your body loses the ability to breathe involuntarily. Can you imagine? You have to think “breathe, breathe” all the time, or you stop breathing.

Psychologists should play poker. Maybe they do. Maybe they’re the ones who win all the money on TV. Then they have the gall to charge my mom $120/hour.

We stop. Cosmic moment, I guess. Ooooh, is life really a nightmare? We need to spend like ten seconds contemplating that.

“Some people thrive on complexity, Craig.”

Tentacles is my term—the Tentacles are the evil tasks that invade my life. Like, for example, my American History class last week, which necessitated me writing a paper on the weapons of the Revolutionary War, which necessitated me traveling to the Metropolitan Museum to check out some of the old guns, which necessitated me getting in the subway...

The party line is that some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle, but I think they do it to make us feel important.

I want the Shift so bad. I’m waiting for the phrase that will invoke it. It’ll be like a miracle within my life.

I jumped at her face as she pulled the blanket aside, bringing it taut under the encyclopedias.

Mom threw her hands up and held the books in place, saving both of us from getting clobbered.

She shoved the encyclopedias back and loped across the room, swooping me up in her thin arms with the elbow skin that you could pull down.

My brain was all right back then; it didn’t get stuck in ruts.

And that was the closest I’ve ever come to an epiphany.

There are brownstones—limestone and maroon houses that stand like fence posts and always have Indian men refurbishing them—and everybody goes crazy for those, pays millions of dollars to live in them.

I used to like the foods that come in abstract shapes: chicken nuggets, Fruit Roll-Ups, hot dogs.

I could demolish a bag of Cheez Doodles; I’d have Doodle Cheez so far infused into my fingertips, I’d be tasting it on myself for a day.

Jordan, a Tibetan spaniel, looks like a small, brown lion. He’s small and cute but completely crazy. His breed was devised in Tibet for the purpose of guarding monasteries.

When he came into our home, he immediately fixated on the house as a monastery, the bathroom as the most sacred monastic cell, and my mom as the Abbess.

It’s amazing how she looks more stately and confident as she gets older.

My parents are always looking into new ways to fix me. They’ve tried acupuncture, yoga, cognitive therapy, relaxation tapes, various kinds of forced exercise (until I found my bike), self-help books, Tae Bo, and feng shui in my room.

But I find God to be an ineffectual shrink. He adopts the “do nothing” method of therapy. You tell him your problems and he, ah, does nothing.

“I can’t eat any more either,” I say. I’ve managed five bites. My stomach is churning and closing fast.