Amnesial

Once upon a couple days ago, I got caught staring off into space. Again. Alex asked me what I was thinking, and I was somewhat embarrassed to say that I was imagining myself as a wildland firefighter, trying to save a couple of greenhorns from burning up in a ravine, durned fools running headfirst into a foehn wind, still carrying their goddamned Pulaskis and McCleods.

Durned?

Oh. That part was apparently out loud.

Don't you do that?

What?

Fantasize?

Sure, about James Blunt.

No, I mean like role playing.

Sure, about James Blunt.

What I mean is, and please don’t say James Blunt again, do you create elaborate internal scenarios whereby you pretend you are a different person acting out some sort of real life drama that has at its core some sort of trial or tribulation or fundamentally difficult decision?

I imagine I once had to choose between James Blunt and Matthew McConaughey.

Must be nice. I’m constantly role-playing. Me as a private investigator. Me as a WW II medic. Me as an ordinary bystander forced to hotwire a truck full of explosives and drive it away from the daycare center and into the Willamette River where it explodes just as I jump to safety but knocked unconscious and amnesial and found floating 2 miles down the river by fruitarian separatists who wean me back from the brink with avocado porridge and avocado shakes and avocado supplements…

This can’t be normal.