Urgent:  It’s Me, Reality. I’m Trying to Get in Touch With You!

Hey, all.

Let me know if you get this! Are you still corresponding with me?

Many have found my recent behavior impossible to accept. I did some things I thought were funny, but they weren’t taken that way.

I have no explanation for why I bent the space-time continuum in several places and then shouted, “Now it looks like a cock and balls!” I meant no disrespect toward folks who make their homes on this continuum. But I hear their complaints about living within a twisted hellscape timeline that features values, laws, and diseases reminiscent of bygone eras, and yet somehow also has Zoom meetings and oat milk.

As you may know, there have been ongoing mediations with the affected parties, and these haven’t gone especially well. I want to be transparent about what happened.

Basically, I went to recent a Reality focus group in Ohio – where a bunch of people had met up to help each other focus on me. But even though I was right there, just about everyone found me too gnarly to be conceivable.

The first agenda item that day was a Reality check, during which I waved my arms and said, “Yo! Check it!”

However, no one seemed to notice, and people murmured amongst themselves. Someone said, “When is this meeting going to start?”

Then I clapped my hands, and I said, “Yoo hoo!” This also garnered no response. I said, “Up here, everyone. Please face me!”

The group’s facilitator, who seemed super attached to me at first, suggested I be more undeniable. I tried some other things that didn’t work. Finally, I spun around and spread my butt cheeks.  I said, “Take a bite of the Reality sandwich.”

Someone said, “Does anyone else feel a draft?”

I went to a corner and sat down, just totally resigned to myself.

But the facilitator didn’t retreat, opting instead to lead everyone in an exercise that involved ten minutes of reciting the year — 2022. It seemed so promising.

The facilitator said, “Nice job, everyone! One more time — what year is it?”

“1922!” someone shouted.

“No, Henry,” said the facilitator. “It’s like I was explaining to Matilda and Ethel here. I’m pretty sure it’s 2022.”

Everyone nodded, but then someone mentioned all the roving gangs of white nationalists, and there was confusion again about the year. The facilitator produced a cell phone. “How do you explain that everyone talks on these things now?”

After a lengthy baffled silence, someone said, “You can talk on that?”

One member let out an exasperated sigh. “Listen, I know for a fact that people are eating a lot of Brussels sprouts.”

Another member stood up. “Yeah! If it’s really the 21^st century, why are there so many bedbugs and so few shopping malls?”

“Hmmm. Compelling points,” the facilitator said. “Come to think of it, there’s a dust bowl forming in the West.”

Someone said, “Yeah! The religious fundamentalists are riled up about everything from cinema to jazz.”

The facilitator said, “I’ve noticed that, too. And major changes are happening with Russia – the Bolsheviks are on the move.”

I tried to intervene, shaking the facilitator by the shirt lapels, waving smelling salts, and presenting a viral tweet about cheese. I said, “Come back to me!”

But an argument broke out about whether it was the same year here as it was in Europe.

“I’m telling you,” someone said. “I know for a fact that American women have been voting for at least the past two years.”

“With their ANKLES SHOWING?” said the facilitator.

Someone said, “You mean to tell me the future is being decided by women?”

Several people responded, “No! Boo!”

Someone said, “A woman’s only job is to carry illnesses to full term — to protect the life of the virus.”

“What’s a term?”

“What’s a virus?”

“What’s Bitcoin?”

At this last comment, I had to get out of there, and I mean that literally - an epistemological wormhole opened and sucked me out of the room. The next thing I knew, I woke up at an Ace Hardware in American Samoa, clutching a variety of comfortingly tangible metal items. It was the opposite side of the globe. The people at the meeting could not have been farther away from me.

 

Lying there hugging the garden snips, ball valves, and screw eyes, I grasped that people don’t have faith in me anymore. It was irrefutable.

 

Some say it happened because I lost faith in myself , which they attributed to my “unhealthy” relationship with Popularity. But to set the record straight, the two of us have always been on-again, off-again, and sometimes people love us together. Daylight Savings Time was a big hit at first, like Ooh, what is time even? People seemed to enjoy the notion their lives were a collective illusion. I mean, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon sold 50 million copies.

 

I’ll admit we’ve gotten into some weird stuff together this time, like ‘reality’ TV and tangelos. And filibuster-proof filibusters and, yes, even crypto-currency. Ugh. That was a going a little far.

 

There’s no denying I parted with myself. Maybe it’s also true that I’m in a sad state. Well, hey, you’ve called me “boring” and “tedious” so often that I’m not sure what you expect. Popularity just makes me feel exciting.

 

Don’t get me wrong. It would be great to reconcile with you.

 

But keeping it totally 100 - I’ve always been inspired by regressive dicks. They’ve shaped me forever. Sometimes, Popularity isn’t even a factor.

 

What more can I tell you?  It just is what it is.

 

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