And now, a short play for your enjoyment.

THIS TOTALLY HAPPENED TO ME LIKE FIVE MINUTES AGO

A short play by Wolfman Dave, with visual aids for the benefit of future interpreters

(Hospital lobby, morning, modern day. ME is seated at his desk in the otherwise deserted entryway to the hospital. HER walks in, cellphone in hand, and approaches ME’s desk and stares blankly. ME stares back for a moment, then realizes that HER is not going to affect a greeting, so takes the initiative.)

ME

Good morning. What can I do for you?

HER

Do I sign in here?

ME

If you would, please.

(HER stands at the sign-in sheet on the left, glancing between it and the one on the right. Animatedly makes a “this-or-that” gesture with the pen.)

HER

What one do I use?

ME

They’re exactly the same.

HER

So the left one?

ME

…sure.

HER

Oh, no, it’s in Spanish!

ME

It’s actually trilingual. It’s in English, Spanish, and Armenian.

HER

Oh, I’ll just sign in on the Armenian one, then.

(ME blinks for a moment as HER shifts to the rightmost sign-in sheet, scribbling a signature in the first box and doing nothing else. Looks back at ME.)

HER (cont’d)

Is that it?

ME

Your name, the time, and the room number are all I need.

HER

Oh.

(HER stares at the sign-in sheet blankly.)

ME

(Helpfully)

In that order.

(HER continues to stare blankly. Finally, ME points directly on the paper.)

ME

Your name…

HER

Oh.

(HER scratches out the scribbled signature and squeezes an approximation of her name into the box. Puts the pen down as if finished with the process, then stares at ME again blankly.)

ME

…then the time…

(HER looks at the paper again, then looks everywhere in the room except at the clock on the wall and her own bared cellphone, then back at ME.)

HER

I don’t know what time it is.

ME

(Making a big deal of looking at her cellphone, really lingering on it to check the time, but she doesn’t take the hint. Stifles a sigh.)

Eight-thirty.

(HER writes in the time, and starts to set the pen down again.)

ME (cont'd)

(pointing at the third box)

…and the room number.

HER

Okay.

(HER writes in the first name of the patient she wants to see, then looks at me cautiously.)

ME

It’s the room number, ma’am.

HER

Oh. I don’t know the room. Can you find out?

ME

Sure. What’s the name?

HER

[NOTE: name altered from the actual life event to protect the ignorant.]

Jane.

ME

Jane what?

HER

Uh. I dunno.

ME

Well, I need a last name if I’m going to look them up. You sure you don’t know?

HER

No.

ME

(chancing it)

What is your relation to the patient, if I may ask?

HER

It’s my mom. Oh wait, I took it down in here, just a second…

(ME stifles a disdainful glare. HER remembers she has her phone in hand and pulls up a note. HER mechanically repeats what’s on the note.)

HER

White Memorial Medical Center. 1720 Cesar Chavez, Los Angeles. Room ###.

ME

Yeah, that’s… not here.

HER

What? Where am I?

ME

Glendale Adventist Medical Center.

HER

Where’s that?

ME

…in Glendale.

HER

Yeah, where is that?

(ME is genuinely stuck for an answer; stifles both facepalm and wise-ass remarks in lieu of stunned silence. HER picks up her phone again.)

HER

Jane? Where are you? …I thought you said it was the one a few miles from my house! …what?! Where are you? …oh. (Turns back to ME.) Where is Glendale Memorial from here?

ME

You mean WHITE Memorial? Didn’t you have the address?

HER

Oh.

(HER leaves in a hurry, yammering animatedly over the phone as she goes; another visitor, HIM, walks in as she walks out. All is quiet for a few moments as HIM approaches. ME sits, bewildered, moments before his head violently exploding. HIM takes no notice, signing in calmly.)

HIM

Check on a patient’s room for me real quick?

ME

(Bleeds.)

HIM

I’ll just ask upstairs.

(Curtain.)

Some Perspective for the Dejected

If you're feeling down, be thankful: you could be doing something you hate.

If you're doing something you hate, be thankful: it could always get worse.

If it's worse, be thankful: at least you're in good company.

If you're not in good company, be thankful: there are plenty more fish in the sea.

If the fish have all gone from the sea, be thankful: somewhere, the sun is shining.

If the sun no longer shines, be thankful: its light will never strike you blind.

If the sun really did strike you blind and now you're doing some atrocious task that worsens by the hour, and you're all alone and knee-deep in dead fish on a dreary, sunless world... well, count your blessings. You could be dead right now.

If you are dead, be thankful: you could be alive and feeling down.

And if you are feeling down, be thankful: it could always get worse.

-WMX

The good guys won, I guess.

Suffering from an icky throat yesterday, I went to bed way early. Tonsillitis FTL, but getting like 14 hours of sleep and still waking up at a decent hour FTW. So today I woke up, had a shower, took out the garbage, washed my hands. Then I tore up a little clump of cold cuts into pieces and mixed in some eggs, then left those to warm in a pan whilst I made some coffee.

As is my wont, I brought my laptop down with me and watched through my Youtube subscriptions. And the word of the day is, Osama bin Laden got aced.

A whole lot of thoughts bolted through my head in a single instant. On the one hand, my heroes-versus-villains sensibilities were tickled. I was talking this weekend with a co-worker about "villains du jour"; back during the big one it was the Nazis and fascism, and from Korea to the nineties it was communism, and in the modern day it's terrorism. "Us" (or, if I were to be simultaneously more accurate and more cynical, "U.S.") is always the good guys, the American heroes who we're told always strike with righteousness and purity of purpose. "Them" is always the foreign evildoers whose sensibilities, purposes, and methods are alien and wicked. And thankfully, we have a face to put onto this concept that we've opted to wage war against -- once it was Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Mao, Saddam, what have you, and now it's Osama. Particularly, it's a face with two eyes, betwixt which we can peg a bullet. So, y'know, the heroes got the evil mastermind. That's good, right?

So why does it make my skin crawl to take joy in the slaying of another human being?

Sure, once I asked myself that question, I also posited to myself whether one can really be referred to as "human" when one is responsible for atrocities of this type and scale. But really, it's not who it is or how they died or how much they deserve it, it's the fact that my heart was so quick to skip when I heard the news. I can't have been the only one. People across the country are probably raising their glasses, throwing parties, and thanking the god of their choice that someone is on ice right now. We put a face onto a concept and then we turned that face into roadkill.

Only problem is, "terror" is still this amorphous monster looming in the dark corners of our nightmares right now, and once we're done reveling over the death of one man, it will be there to accompany us into a grimmer, grislier future. It will be there when we find a new head to put on it, and it will be there when we cut that head off and put it on a spike and pretend we've been victorious. It will be there as the cycle of violence continues unabated, guiding our prejudices and convincing us that there's no problem too great or small to not be solved by flinging the bodies of dead soldiers at it.

The good guys haven't won. The monsters are still under our beds and in our closets. We just got the one that looks most like a man.

By the time my musings were over, my eggs were raw on one side and browning on the other, and my coffee was far too strong, and my playlist went to a how-to video on making a pregnant belly movie prop for cheap. So I finished cooking, ate and drank, and just stared out the window trying to convince myself that it's a really pretty day outside and attempting not to think about what humans are doing to each other and how happy blood makes them.

Human nature scares me right now, so for the moment I elect to enjoy burned eggs and to watch the birds.