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Everyone Has a Weird Thing They Think About
Mine involves a Lego and bare feet
It’s 2 a.m. The house is dark, I need the bathroom, and my bare foot is hovering an inch above the floor.
My brain, which has been asleep for hours, picks this exact moment to wake up and ask a question. “What if there’s a Lego?”
It doesn’t matter that the odds are tiny. My foot freezes in midair anyway, and I spend the next ten seconds shuffling across the floor like a nervous man crossing a frozen pond.
That’s my weird thing. Not a deep fear about mortality or the economy, just a stupidly specific mental loop about a plastic brick.
Apparently I’m not alone. This year, people online have been sharing the oddly specific things that live rent-free in their heads, and stepping on a Lego barefoot kept showing up.
These little loops are funny because they’re so specific. They also say something about how our brains work. We’re always scanning for threats and rehearsing disasters that will probably never happen, and sometimes the disaster is two centimeters long and has a smiley face on it.
Tiny Brick, Nine-Foot Fear
The fear isn’t entirely irrational. Stepping on a Lego hurts more than it has any right to, and there’s…
