Dispatches from the middle

Day 13: Sometimes reality is well nigh impossible to accept as such. Things I just can’t believe include:

1. That there’s chocolate in my cupboard that I haven’t eaten yet. I keep remembering it’s there, and then actually forgetting again. Wie ist das überhaupt möglich?

2. That there are so many topics about which I’m afraid to voice my honest opinion for fear of offending someone unnecessarily.

3. That tomorrow is September 1 already. Time is a tricky one.

4. That people don’t take better care of each other. Generally speaking. That one can so easily and quickly lose sight of another’s humanity.

5. That the people down the hall are still fighting. That’s at least two episodes of Breaking Bad worth of conflict.

6. That I have not yet, by eyes-closed-finger-stabbing-at-a-globe, coin-flipping, card-drawing, or turtle-racing chosen a completely random travel destination and then taken the trip. Come to think of it, now that I’m thinking of it, for added entertainment value and a triple redundancy randomness guarantee, one could combine all of these methods. Pick one potential destination by poking the globe, one by flipping a coin, and one by drawing a card, giving yourself three final possibilities. To pop back for a second, choosing names out of a hat or using any one of many online random country generators can help with the assignment of places to sides of coins and individual cards. Then – and here’s where it gets really fun – find yourself three turtles. Paint one of your three possible destinations on each turtle, point them towards an arbitrary finish line, and wait. Whowever/wherever wins, you go. Alternately, if you don’t want the responsibility of either caring for or disposing of the turtles you’ve procured for yourself (I mean, who’s going to take care of them while you’re away?), write your three finalists on three french fries, set them out in the grass, and see which gets nabbed by a bird first. Or last, for that matter.