Twilight Zone

Did you ever have a dream that, upon waking, you thought was completely clever and droll, and boy, I should write that down, somebody could make a movie out of that someday! And then, when you wake up a little more, and are shuffling around the house wiping sleep crud out of the corners of your eyes and trying to find the nearest available oasis of caffeine-rich beverages, you realize you can barely remember the dream, and what the hell was so interesting about it in the first place?

Well, I just had a dream like that. Just thought you'd like to know.

You may have noticed that I'm either spluttering about work, or else yammering on about my dreamlife. Which may have you wondering1) Are you Walter Mitty's female, real life counterpart? and 2) Do you have a life outside of sleeping and working?

Ignoring question 1 for the time being, let us contemplate, briefly, the answer to question 2. The short and the long of it is probably 'no.' Truth be told, I'm not sure whose version of 'life' we're talking about here, but Americans on the whole seem to think that any time spent relaxing is evil and must be purged. I disagree. Twelve-to-fourteen hour shifts of backbreaking, on-your-feet-running-around-without-eating are tiring. I do not, therefore, enjoy running around on my days off, and avoid crowds as much as possible. I don't know whether I'm naturally this way, or whether working with people has made me more sensitive to teeming crowds but it seems I'm ironically misanthropic and slightly agoraphobic for someone who has such a public, people-oriented job.

You see, I look at my job as having an alter-ego. There's On-Duty Jamie, who's generally friendly, capable, and affable, and then there's Off-Duty Jamie, who's tired, lazy, doesn't want to be bothered, and frequently mutters unkind things under her breath about people who annoy her.

Oh. No. Major epiphany alert:

I am one of those sad people who will be tragically equipped at being elderly, when the time comes, able to sit for hours in one spot, getting a nice pressure ulcer on my bony ass, spinning garbled, incoherent tales in my dotage, knitting scarves for homeless chihuahas and spending the remainder of the day drooling slightly and looking glazed eyed out into the distance at nothing in particular. (Incidentally, I'll probably be expert at kvetching about my back, also, seeing as it already gets cricky and easily strained as it is).

Any way, as if to confirm our very existence of Mundane Americana Wurld, Ibrahim and I spent three hours at the local Ghetto Mall shopping for some new clothes for him and finding very little of anything wasn't overpriced, fugly, or both. I caught myself doing the little-old-lady thing and griping about the blaringly loud music pumped into most of the stores. Then I wondered, 'Was the music this loud in stores when I was a teenager and I just never noticed it?'

Sigh. It's back to On-Duty Jamie tomorrow. Must go find my telephone booth so I can morph. Hhhhhnnnn... Do they still have telephone booths? I haven't seen one in a long time. Maybe the telephone company realized it was too expensive to give people shelter while making their phone calls, especially since no one really uses them anymore, except in B horror flicks as a plot device, because we've all got cellphones nowadays, or maybe they've all been vandalized out of existence by young, bored hoodlums. Hmmm. What do college kids do for fun nowadays if they can't stuff fifteen of themeselves into a telephone both for kicks? (Don't answer that last question, by the way).