// crime shows, my life, & why i might be a loon//

The thing is, I watch too many crime shows. I know I watch too many when I’ll slip into a marathon and then look around and realize that I have spent six hours consumed by serial killers. I’m looking at you, Criminal Minds. I’ll realize that I’ve missed a meal, and that it’s dark now, but it’s not enough to make me stop. I know that I watch too many crime shows because whenever I am alone I think about how someone could try to murder me. Really. I look around when I’m walking the dog at night and I think, what would I do if someone tried to kidnap me in a windowless van right now? When I go to the laundry room down the hall I think about how someone could be waiting in the darkness of the room and that I’d need to use the detergent as a weapon. I know I watch too many crime shows because I play a game—by myself—where I try to guess the PERP and map out the twists and turns within 15 minutes of the show. I think about how people I know and interact with may or may not be sociopaths because of what I’ve learned from Dr. Huang on Law & Order: SVU. I know I watch too many crime shows because I know that all of this is abnormal behavior, but I keep hanging out with reruns of Benson and Stabler when I get home from work.