No, this isn't going to be a post about the iPad 2, an antique VW Beetle, or the opportunity to watch a chick from the Middle East take a leisurely shower. Though, in a way, I guess it could be. Because I've been thinking a lot about fantasy, and the role fantasy plays in our lives.
I've always been a bit of a daydreamer myself. I don't necessarily engage in Family Guy-style flashbacks or dream-sequences ("Don't say doin' your wife, don't say doin' your wife, don't say doin' your wife..... Doin' your... son?") but I allow my mind to drift to some pretty off the wall places, and I realized recently that a lot of that fantasy in which I engage has nothing to do with wanting to inseminate some female who's not my wife or become President of Texaco Oil or something like that, but it has to do with restraint.
Restraint is kind of how I live my life. Sure, I've been known to be very silly at times, but I always know just how far to go. I always keep my audience or my company in mind, and I know what I can say or what I can do that will most likely be perceived as funny or amusing or charming or just weird enough to not cause alarm in context, and I don't stray from the boundaries I've set up for myself, and that society has set up for me, which was so nice of society to do, by the way: wasn't it?
The things I want to do are never really things I would ever do, but they are thoughts that pop into my head every so often that I find particularly funny, and they almost always involve breaking societal conventions or expectations. For instance, I can recall a terrifically awful class I took back in college that was called... well, I don't remember exactly, but it was "The Somethings of Ancient Japan." The "Ancient Japan" part I remember very well. And I can also remember very well being thoroughly disappointed on the first day of said class when I walked into the room and found at the front of the class not a Japanese individual, ancient or otherwise, but an obese, saggy-faced pumpkin-assed bastard of around sixty, with a bushy beard, thick glasses, and mashed-up teeth. He had a vacant stare that could anesthetize a carton full of manic puppies. He lectured in a tired, thoughtless way, and, during his lectures, at least two or three times a class, he would stop mid-sentence and gaze out the window for a very uncomfortable length of time.
And, while I sat there, in the first row, absolutely mesmerized at this man's capability to turn stories about samurai and ronin into the most painfully dull material on the face of the earth, all I wanted to do was jump on his back and shout jubilantly like a cowboy as I rode him around the room.
That never happened. But I wanted it to.
When neighbors come up to me to chat while I'm walking the dogs, I want to be honest with them and say, "Molly won't shit if you keep distracting her, so, could you please just go about your business and pretend we're not here? I don't want to talk to you anyway." But we all know I can't say that. I force myself to smile and be polite and talk with these insipid, mannerly people, thus extending my dog walk by at least ten minutes.
I want to lie down in the beds of people's parked pick-up trucks. Then, when the owners return to their trucks after doing whatever they're doing, I want to bolt upright and scream, "CHICKENTITS!!!", thus scaring the everloving Christ out of those motherfuckers. I've talked about doing that to someone since I was a kid, but I've never done it, which, I suppose, is part of that tenuous cord that separates me from the clientele with whom I work. I have that golden chalice filled with the liquid of impulse control, and they don't. Which is sad for them, because it gets them tased. And I, most likely, will never be tased.
It'd probably be worth it, though, for the exhilerating thrill of doing something impulsive and stupid that you've always wanted to do. Because, let's face it: it's been a while since I was exhilerated.
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