I have a weird mental tic that comes upon me a lot when I’m observing an unfamilar-to-me human process—my brain makes a kind of note that “well, I’ll see what it’s like when I do it.” I’m watching the bus driver settle one of those wooden-beaded seat covers onto their seat before their shift and wondering how wooden beads could actually be comfortable and something in my brain goes, “Well, when I become a bus driver, I’ll find out what it feels like to drive for so long and maybe I’ll want a wooden-beaded seat cover.” But I’m not going to become a bus driver and never entertained the thought. But my brain sort of misfires all the time and thinks that everything is coming for me eventually. Like parents screaming at their children in the supermarket. Doesn’t seem like the right thing to do, but maybe when I’m a parent of a young toddler stealing cheese, I’ll start screaming in the deli area too. Except I’m not going to have a toddler. I’m not going to become a tree planter, move to Europe, lots of other things, but there’s a part of me that somehow things I will eventually have ALL HUMAN EXPERIENCES?? Yes, I think so.
I feel like this started with jail. Someone somewhere when I was very young made some sort of jokey comment about having not gotten to read something that they wanted to read and that what they really needed was to go to prison for a year and get caught up on all their reading. I was impressionable enough that this sounded…right to me. Perhaps an adult did need to be imprisoned with a stack of books every decade or so, just to get caught up. I didn’t quite believe that…but it made a kind of seductive sense.
I mean, if you don’t know to much about jail it sounds good, right? You don’t have to cook your own meals or clean or have a job, just lie in your bed and read, and go to the dining hall to eat, and go outside for an hour a day to exercise. For the whole rest of the time you could be sprawled about reading. That’s when you really get into the classics. That’s when you start with an author’s first book and read through them until they are dead. I don’t even think you’re allowed a cell phone in prison. Sounds perfect.
There’s some plot holes in this plan, most specifically violence and the toilet beside the bed and missing my family and friends and what crime would I commit? And a few other things. I am not going to prison. But I had this in mind for years and years and if you asked me really quickly when I was thinking about something else, I am pretty sure I would say I AM going to prison at some point in my life, perhaps multiple times, for undisclosed crimes, or perhaps just insufficient reading. And once I started down this mental pathway towards the criminal justice system, what other unlikely events are in my future? Perhaps I will eventually know what it is like to pilot a sled-dog team? Or get into a slap-fight at a bar? Or eat a ham steak? I mean, I won’t but it still seems like, if life is long enough, I might.
Do other people think this way?
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I keep forgetting to mention I have some work events coming up that are open to the public and will likely be really cool—maybe you’d like to come? On September 23 is the Magazines Canada Symposium, tickets on sale until Sunday. It’s going to be all about publishing a magazine, so your mileage may vary, but I think it will be quite fun and interesting and I am the MC.
On Sunday September 27, at Word on the Street I’m moderating The Human Intelligence Panel: Magazines Take on AI at 11:30 am. That one is free and you don’t need a ticket—it’s a really cool group of panelists and an important discussion—hope you can stop by.
Same day, there’s a Magazines Canada Workshop on So You Still Want to Make a Magazine? also at Word on the Street, that one is free but you DO need a ticket. I’m not on stage for that one but I’ll be there saying the sponsorly hellos and running the raffle. I went to the digital version tonight and it was pretty fire.
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I can’t believe I forgot to share this dialogue from a few weeks ago, when we were travelling.
(walking through the hallway of the Comfort Inn shortly after we arrived)
RR: I wonder where the pool is. I haven’t seen it yet.
MS: This hotel doesn’t have a pool.
RR: You said it did. I asked you when you booked it and you said it had a pool.
MS: No. You asked me if the Days Inn had a pool. The Days Inn does have a pool. This is the Comfort Inn, and it doesn’t have a pool.
RR: …
MS: …
RR: It didn’t occur to you I might have been confused?
MS: No?
RR: You just thought to yourself, “Ah, Rebecca is rightly curious about the amenities in a hotel in which we are not staying. I shall tell her and then she shall be informed and satisfied.”??
MS: …Yes.
