Tuesday, August 18, 2009

My personal parallel universe.

So not many people knew this about me before this opst, but every so often I get zapped into a parallel universe. It is very similar to the twilight zone, except it is more comedy based than sci-fi/horror based. In this universe people act strange and pretend that they are being normal. It is really this big practical joke on me enacted on a massive scale.

I can never be certain when I will find myself in my universe, but once there it is obvious that that is where I am at.

I found myself there last week on the way to a party. My friend Tammy recently got a job in California and will be moving there. It is her first job after college. My wife put on a going away party for her and while driving there she lamented that some of Tammy's friends where not able to make it. Apparently they had spent weeks planning an out-of-town trip to go shopping at IKEA and couldn't back out. I thought about this for a while an asked, "Who plans weeks in advance to go out of town to shop?" Kim assured me that this was quite normal. "But, surely if your friend is permanently moving thousands of miles away most people would push back their shopping for them." Perhaps, but this was a trip to IKEA. In fact, Kim assured me, it was perfectly reasonable to not attend such an event for your friend so that you could go out of town and shop at IKEA.

That's when it occurred to me I was in my parallel universe. Here's the difference between the real universe and parallel universe:

Real UniverseParallel Universe
People go out of town to visit points of interest (camping, monuments, historical sites, etc.) or to catch up with old friend.People go out of town to shop.
People postpone unimportant events for their friendsShopping is a more important event than friends.

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