or On Witnesses

My sweetest jellybean,

I know I’ve said it already but thanks so much for yesterday. Oom. Three of my most favorite things: A&W Onion Rings, Popeye cigarettes, and seeing you.

You’re right. You’re right. Of course you’re right. People can’t really change themselves. Not drastically and not all of a sudden. But tiny baby steps are just so boring and infantile and, well, tiny. Yes, this is why I’ll never have a six pack. Besides all my genetic travesties, I’m far too impatient. I need to see results. It’s true of almost everything. If I’m not nearly immediately good at something I give it up. The saxophone. Welding art. Beheading chickens. I’ve tried my hand at many things.

Still, if we were a TV show, this would be the episode where we would witness some horrible crime and they would put us in the Witness Protection Program. I think they should have some charitable organization where regular people could do this. We all get bored. We all get stuck. We all want to be remade. Like the make a wish foundation only we wouldn’t have to be chronically ill just chronically bored. And there it is. The next Reality TV Show. We’re all witnesses anyway, aren’t we? Why should it be the lucky moron who was in the right place at the wrong time who gets shipped off to Montreal with a new name, a new house, and a new job? We all suffer from seeing too much. Of course the TV show wouldn’t be the actual Witness Relocation Program. It’s hard to hide from Four Finger Harry if you are on network television. Twelve people apply, in singles or in couples. They are given new names, new jobs, new histories. And TV cameras follow them around to see how well they adapt to their new lives. People that don’t get caught and don’t go crazy win. The prize: You get to return to your former life or take the new one. Now that’s a prize.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s brother is currently living under an assumed name and an assumed history. That makes perfect sense. Who could blame him? But it’s funny to think that the guy in the cubicle beside you might have a completely made up life.

Transsexuals, as I understand it, have to go through a process where they live as their new gender for something like a year before they can have their operation. One of the applicants could be a transsexual. And there aren’t enough out lesbians on TV reality shows. We’d have to get a couple of lesbians. Now that I think of it, we’ll be assigned new histories and psychologies. That could get tricky. But I’m willing to try almost everything once. If, in a year, Fox has a new show called Recreation or Reassigned or something like that, I’m going to be right there just as litigious as I can be.

But I was saying you’re right. People don’t get to change drastically and suddenly. We have earned who we are. We are who we are for a reason for the most part. And honestly, I would rather be me than almost anybody. I was about 22 when I figured out that and it remains true. But I also get terrifically bored. I also lose interest. And it would be fun – if it were possible – to be somebody else just for a while.

Murphy has one of those embedded chips where, as I imagine it, any grocery store clerk could scan her and find out who she is. I wonder if any criminal has found a hiding witness because of their identity-chipped pet? Now if I hear of a criminal finding a state evidence witness because of their dog’s identity chip I’m going to be right there just as litigious as I can be. A haiku because I feel like it:

I probably should
Have far better things to do
Than to sue a hood

SS