5 year strategy for making promises

They say there is a time and a place for everything. Who knew they were talking about multiverses?

It makes one shake one's head and tilt the pelvis backwards.

Some say that there's a parallel universe where some important decision you took - e.g. what to order in the food court in Chinatown - actually went another way. And every other parameter in the whole fucking universe remained constant. Only now, things are unfolding in dizzily different directions, all because you ordered chicken laksa instead of vegie laksa. I mean, the vegetables they give you are often terrible, but then the chicken is often weird too. I think maybe it's an egret.

But there's a parallel universe where I'm not depressed. Where life spat in my eye, but I laughed uncontrollably, then for 10 minutes controllably, then uncontrollably again, and so on in alternating recurrence FOR EVER. What a universe that would be.

But there's just too many to catalogue. Certainly in excess of 1,00,0.

The thing is, each passerby that I try to tell my life story to just looks at me with irritation. Except those folks selling things. They're so full of beans. They're jumping up and down and dancing. They go to shake my hand. I take it and hold on a moment too long. Yes, God yes I do want to hear about this cooling out study opportunity. But first, may I share with you... my life story. It won't take long. Only... my whole life!

In fact it would take much longer than that, as any half sane jackass could tell you. I mean, you can spend half an hour just telling someone about that time you wiped your ass 7 straight times and never once did clean tissue emerge. When in reality, that portion of your life took only 4-6 minutes. And so it can take a damn long time to tell your life's story. Maybe even the length of the life of the universe! But not the multiverse, because those are different stories.

Have you tried narrative therapy? I think they read you fairy tales. I love reading my kids fairy tales. At times we're lying there, and one of them will transform into a werewolf. They're crouching on the bed, very long of torso, at least 2/3 of the bed length, dark, sweaty, dirty hair. Breath that smells like dog. Some stray hand dangling out of the corner of their mouth. They HOOOOWWWLLLL at the moon, and bump their head on the bunk.

Then I'm back at uni, in those smoke filled lecture theatres. It's hard to believe that every student used to bring their own smoke machine into the theatre. It was incredibly atmospheric, but I couldn't see the screen at all. I pull out my DNA Ray Gun and survey the room. Makenzi from Botany has more life forms on her than Dane from the Lower Middle North Shore. Neither of them can tell me how to treat cancer.

It was a love story, a love story between two screens. I had been worried that my wife and I were drifting apart - literally, not figuratively. She would retreat to her room, eyes fixed to that blasted eyephone screen. I would flee to my room, one eye glued to my laptop screen, the other bluetacked to it, as I had run out of glue. Those were some of the most addictive times of my life. God I discovered so much. She watched so many documentaries. But we recognised that we had a problem. Fortunately our screens solved the problem for us, by beginning a passionate love affair. It started innocently, when I placed a condom over my wife's phone and rested it gently on my keyboard and then firmly closed the laptop cover. But before long, these two screens were inseparable. They were photographed for TMZ, they planned nuptials. So different, such different backgrounds. Wrong side of the tracks and all that jazz. But they found a way, which in this day and age is pretty much par for the course. In all days and ages it's been par for the course, finding a way just means not breaking up. Y'know. And I'm happy to say they were legally married - in the ACT, which allows weird shit like that. 

"I'll never love another"
"How can you know that?"
"I just do"
"But how can you? You really can't know that"
"Fine you might be right but I felt like saying it, doesn't that count for something?"
"Why not just say 'I hope I never love another?'"
"Because that is unromantic as all get in"
"Fool me you kiss"

Until she discovered that it wasn't a possum eating the chicken food. Pressing down on the lever. It was a person. Making possum sounds. Oh shit that is so weird and scary. This person was crawling past their bedroom window every single night at about midnight, crawling into the chicken coop, growling like a possum, opening the chicken feeder lid and then moving on. So scary. It really doesn't pay to entertain the full weirdness of the world too much. That shit'll burst your dam.