I think the tangerines are multiplying. There was one on my desk yesterday, when I came into work, which I ate, and now there are two. Some people might think it odd to eat a tangerine (or food) of doubious origin, however all food is of dubious origin, isnt it? And I like tangerines.
I apparently have this problem where I think I am invincible. I know this is going to get me in trouble one day, but you see, perhaps I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't backed up by evidence like, getting exposed to strep all the time and never getting it, being immune to salmonella (recent claim since I eat the same food as other people and they get food poisoning and I don't--mostly involving poultry), or hitchhiking, and picking up hitch hikers. A good bit of this is probably luck, the rest is who knows...more luck, and a strong immune system.
The issue then becomes trying to grasp "normal", and how to make characters seem normal, or have "believable" reactions to things, like eating slightly under-cooked turkey, a normal remark apparently is not "eh, it will be alright." Some of my characters have a bit of my sense of invincibility, they live life along the "if it doesnt kill me it makes me stronger" belief, and well, if it doesn't make me stronger it only hurt a little bit right, plus scars are cool.
The issue that I run into is that I base characters on people, real people, or well real peoples personalities. And the personality I am best able to dissect is my own, which brings me back to my limited knowledge of normal. So my characters sometimes react to things in a very un-caviler way and I loose a readers since of belief, they dont understand the reasoning behind it, and want me to explain more...but well, that reaction is normal to me. So, I'm left trying to explain a rational that is perfectly reasonable to myself, to people who don't think like me, which means I have to think like them, which isn't an easy task.
How do you manage it?