Behind those eyeballs

A facebook friend recently posed the question "If you could be anyone else for a day, who would it be?"  My rather flippant answer was "You?" That's started a chain reaction in my mind that has me up at 4 AM.

I tried to explain, but quickly found myself sounding like a creepy stalker. The thing is, the whole idea of being inside of another person's head is pretty creepy and stalker-like. Before long, I realized that while other folks on the thread wanted to be be Mother Teresa or Eleanor Roosevelt, I pretty much want to find out what it's like inside everybody. 

This hits on one of my most persistent mental constructs. Maybe this should be just between me and my therapist, but I frequently think about people I'm talking to, people I see in the store, other drivers, all looking out from behind their own eyeballs, not experiencing the same thing I am, even if we're in the same place. 

I am emphatically not a person who consumes horror media. I never watch graphically violent movies. I even close my eyes to keep from watching your run-of-the-mill shootouts and car chases. But when I think about getting inside somebody else's head, I'm drawn like a shark to the Jefferey Dahmers and Bernie Madoffs. What makes someone do things like that? What is it like in there?

Would I want to be them for a day? Hell no. But maybe for an hour or two. Eleanor Roosevelt or James Baldwin? Sure, them too. The heavily tatooed cashier at Food Lion? Yup, count me in. I'm curious about pretty much everyone --- the pre-school teacher and the plumber, the retirement-age guy who comes around to check our termite traps, even the plunderers and murderers waging holy war across Iraq right now. What is it like inside that mind?

Writing books is the closest I can get to being inside someone else's head. You often hear writers say that the characters take on a life of their own. They take off in unforeseen directions and hijack the story. I always wonder where the characters who populate my books come from. I think it's from my insatiable curiosity about what makes people tick.

I've known my wife Jill for 12 years. We've spent hours and days and weeks talking, going to couple's counselling, sharing secrets, spilling guts. Do I know her? Yes, . . . and no. We often say the same thing at the same time. I can predict with some certainty what she will say or think about many things, though she still surprises me. But I don't know what it's like to be her. I can't swim in her thoughts and look out from her unique perspective.

If I had to choose one person in the world to be for a day, I couldn't do it. The closest would be my mother, but not for a day, oh, heavens no. End stage Alzheimer's would be scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer. But yes, I wish I could know what goes on in my Mama's mind. What does she see from behind those eyeballs? How much does she know? Is she still in there ----- trapped and unable to communicate? Does she know who I am? Does she know who she is?

So what do you think, is it a writer thing, this wanting to worm my way into other people's heads? Or maybe I should just call my therapist.

I wonder what goes on behind her eyeballs.