Do You Feel Weird? I Do.

So-o-o-o …

Here’s the next question for you. Is something weird going on?

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting here innocently typing away. For no good reason I could pin down, I felt strange. A little strange. This is not a new thing for me.

I looked around. On my left was a glass of warm soda pop and my notebook. On my right, a mostly empty jar of peanuts and cookie crumbs. Everything normal.

No it wasn’t. Something was … I don’t know what. Weird.

Ever get the feeling that somebody is watching you when you know you are alone? That’s the relatively uneasy feeling I was having. Earlier I’d had a wedge of cheese and a pickle. (I enjoy a varied diet.) So I knew this feeling was not the result of a change in my eating habits. (Except for cucumbers. I love cucumber sandwiches at two in the morning. Yum! What I don’t like are the dreams that follow – being chased by 100-foot-tall dachshunds with vampire fangs.) Actually, the jury is still out where cucumber sandwiches are concerned. For one thing, I love them. For another, some of my best stories have been written the morning after …

I digress.

But maybe not. I’m presently co-authoring a science fiction … something … where the main character finds himself in another dimension that looks just like this dimension. Mostly. Sort of.

Yes! That’s how I felt – I was living in another dimension that looked just like this one. A touch creepy perhaps, but nothing compared to life with my first wife.

So I’m going along, doing fine, ya know? Going along. And one night I’m invited to see a friend of mine in a production of the play EQUUS. So there I am, watching a strange presentation being performed on a raised dance floor in the back room of a gay bar. To be honest, the play was predictable. More interesting was the person wedged in beside me. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to guess if it was a man or a woman. The highpoint of the evening was when the creature turned to me and said “I feel weird.”

Ya think?!

I let that pass. I mean …. Letting that pass is a good idea, don’t you agree?

I was standing in a department store a few days later and heard one clerk say to another, “I feel weird.” Same words. I followed the voice and saw a woman who looked quite normal. At least it looked like a woman. I hoped it was a woman. Normal.

So now I’m feeling a little anxious in addition to weird. Coincidences like this bother me. I stop eating pickles for awhile, but it doesn’t help very much.

And then – there was the evening that pushed me over the edge. I was at a Writers Group meeting … (and I’m mad crazy about this group. We don’t write anything. Sometimes we read bits of this or that. In general we gossip and eat. One night we had cucumber sandwiches. I was in hog heaven.}

Anyway, in the middle of the “meeting,” someone says “I feel weird.”

I almost dropped a cucumber.

So-o-o… here’s my question. Is there some big conspiracy going on? (No, that wasn’t the question. Here it is.)

Do you feel weird? What do you think?

(Okay. Technically that’s two questions. Sue me,)

Jb


And how was your day?

(I know. I know. Three questions. The last one doesn’t count.)