When I Imagine Another Life

Sometimes I imagine a life different than the one I lead. This life involves an actual hairstyle and interaction with adults--or at least people who do not insist on standing on the bathroom counter and licking my chapstick while I'm prying open my eyes and pressing contact lenses to my eyeballs. In my imagined life, stuff (like shoes and magazines and clean dishes and the remote control and the cushions on the couch and the crocheted afghans) would stay put. I could sit on the toilet seat without wiping it off first.

I would get a paycheck and a W-2 form and tote a leather bag back and forth to a Very Important Job. I'd eat lunch in restaurants with silverware and work out at the gym on my way back home. Weekends would be for sleeping in, seeing movies and getting pedicures. Only the telephone would interrupt my reading and I wouldn't have to answer it, unlike the whining voice calling from the bathtub which will not be ignored.

And in my spare time, I'd write Meaningful Prose which would magically work itself into novel form, find itself an agent, get itself published, garner itself glowing reviews, and sell fifty thousand copies. And then I'd go on Oprah and become Very Rich.

I'd spend time at a cottage at the beach with friends so witty and amusing that I'd overcome my natural inclination to hibernate and laugh my head off instead.

And while I walked barefoot along the frothy beach, shivering in the always chilly ocean wind, I'd imagine another life, the life I have right now, the one full of life and noise and unmatched socks.