In the Fist of Fun book there was a section called "Peter's Mad Thoughts", where Peter Baynham described a thing he does where he suddenly and graphically imagines doing something terrible, like sitting opposite a nice old man in a cafe, and suddenly throwing boiling coffee in his face, or kissing the tramp outside Sainsbury's and asking him to be his boyfriend.
The thoughts are then followed by the realisation of the consequences.... for instance he writes that if he threw hot tea in the nice old man's face the police would be called, the old man would be screaming, and he would feel awful. Or if he asked the tramp out, he would have to wear a dress.
I've always had these "mad thoughts" myself, and wondered if anybody else ever has them. However I've been getting them more frequently recently, so I'll vent here so everybody will think I'm a psycho.
Last Friday I was quite ill, and I asked Ms_Tentacle if we had any Heinz tomato soup, because when you're feeling poorly, you HAVE to have Heinz tomato soup.
We didn't, but she put on her socks and shoes, got some change together, went to the shops, bought the soup and some bread, came back, heated up the soup, made some bread and butter, and put it all on a tray and brought it into me as I sat sickly on the sofa.
And I was suddenly seized with the mad thought of just throwing the tray in her face.
Now, I hasten to add at this point that at no point would I ever do such a thing, I'm completely incapable of doing such things, but my mind seems to have taken to delight in playing out unthinkable situations for its own amusement.
If I had done that, there would have been a few seconds of shocked silence, then she would have started screaming, and afterwards there would have been crying, and she may well have left me, and I would have had to have cleaned all the kind, wasted soup up. It would have been horrible.
Anyway, I told my mum about my "mad thoughts", and she told me that they are very common, and are symptom of "wanting to hurt yourself".... by thinking about doing things that are unspeakably cruel and terrible, you want to punish yourself... the guilt you would feel by throwing hot soup over your kind girlfriend would be a form of self-flagellation.
Now THIS really disturbed me, because as far as I can tell I'm not a mental, so I'd like to know.... does anybody else get mad thoughts? I don't hate myself by any means, so I reckon she's talking mumshite.
I'd love to link to the correct page in the Fist of Fun book from
www.fistoffun.net but I can't be arsed to find it.