Wake Up Walter Mitty

Chapter 2

I returned to my humble abode around 6pm. The day had been dreadful, but I expected as much. The plague struck violently all day. The worst of it involved a security guard and a seeing-eye dog. My goodness, the plague even affected animals. I checked my messages and we relieved to hear a decent soliloquy delivered by my mother. Apparently the plague was unable to threaten people through the answering machine.

My father had recently injured his back while listing a few boxes in his office, and Mom called to inform me of the results of his doctor’s appointment. He was fine. The doctor apparently prescribed some muscle relaxers and some well-deserved rest. I sighed faintly and again plopped into the comfort of another couch. As I stared at the spackled ceiling, I again pondered my lamentable state. I hadn’t been out for more than three weeks and I really didn’t have a whole lost of prospects. My ex-girlfriend, Katie, would call every week or so to make sure I was still miserable. I decided not to mention the plague to her, it would only delight and amuser her. She and I broke up several months prior to the plague so she had no idea of its devilish effects. Unfortunately, I couldn’t blame the breakup on the plague. The fault for that one lied with her and her loser current boyfriend. I could have understood if she had dumped me for a clean-cut, well-educated, handsome gentleman, after all, who could have blamed her, but no, she had to dump me for a pot smoking, beer drinking, high school drop out with a lisp and a name like Phil. He did have a varied assortment of concert shirts, and he was Mr. Popular at the local bowling alley. Come to think of it, he also had new rims on his truck. He had a lot more to offer. The whole thing disgusted me.

Since the time of our breakup, she and inbred boy had continued to date and had even toyed with the idea of marriage. I, on the other hand, struggled to cope with the breakup. I would sit at home and play with the computer, or I would go to a dance and watch the rest of the world enjoy themselves. Then, when I contracted the mysterious plague, the chances of a relationship became virtually impossible. Oh, I had tried several times, but each attempt resulted in sheer agony. Danielle, my latest victim, lasted about an hour before she was overwhelmed. The conversation began innocently enough, and before I knew it she was on top of the table, singing Barbara Steisand hits and kicking her legs like a Rockette. It was disastorous and yet altogether predictable. I was beginning to understand it. The plague was now a big enough part of my life that I began to see certain patterns develop and certain rules emerge.

I mentioned that I was happy to discover that it didn’t afflict people through the answering machine. It did, however, have a distinct effect during live conversation on the phone. Generally the plague was limited by a certain geographical distance (about 10-15ft), but for some reason phone lines extended that distance. Despite the effect the plague exerted on phone conversations, it had no such effect on live TV broadcasts or radio transmissions. I was slightly disappointed to find that out, I could have had a lot of fun if that had been the case. The plague did affect animals, dogs more so than cats or hamsters, but less so than birds. I often found myself in a warped version of Hitchcock’s famous movie. I also found that the plague afflicted different people in different ways. Stupidity is difficult to rank by degrees, because every person is at a different level to begin with, but the plague had a unique way of bringing everyone down to that bottom level.

Every day I noticed something new and different about the effects of the plague, but the stupidity generally fell into two basic categories. The first category was that of the logic leaps. If I said I liked the Los Angeles Lakers, then I must be from Las Angeles, and if I’m not from Los Angeles then I must be an actor, and if I’m not an actor then I must be making millions of dollars. These logical leaps inevitably lead to mistaken identities. I came to feel a little bit like Walter Mitty in reverse. Everyone but me believed I was someone else. I must admit that I kind of enjoyed playing with the while idea, but the negatives far outweighed the positives.

The second category was that of sheer weirdness. This category was far scarier, because it wasn’t predicatble at all. People would sing songs, quote Shakespeare, cluck like a chicken, or imitate inanimate objects. It could be just about any type of behavior, but it was never expected and rarely duplicated by other stricken persons. It was, however, repeated by the same person every time I came into contact with them. For example Jeremy never demonstrated any other weird behavior. The effects of the plague were limited to the Vietnam scenario. Such was the case with everybody, they stuck to their specific idiocy doggedly.

Besides the two categories listed above, several other categories existed. I came to expect the unexpected. Sometimes the plague would randomly skip someone, or so it seemed to me. I determined that the idiocy they experienced was of a silent variety. Most of the time, however, it would strike repeatedly for several days in a row, and my life would be in tatters.

I lunged and picked up the remote just before the thought of a tattered life threatened to thrust me into deep depression, and flipped on the mindless dribble that the TV had to offer. I glanced at the clock and realized that my daydream had occupied the better part of three hours. Plague or no plague, I had to force my self to go out.

posted by Cool Dad @ 8:15 PM