“Hey, where are you?”
“Umm, right here?”
“No, I mean where’s your head gone off to? You’ve got that faraway look in your eyes that means while your physical body is present, your consciousness has taken a trip to the moon or an island resort or somewhere else the rest of us want to go, too.”
“Oh, right. Sorry – it was getting hot with the air conditioning broken here again so I was thinking about playing in the snow like when I was a kid, and now I’m freezing. You got an extra sweater handy?”
“We’re all wearing short sleeves because of the broken air conditioning.”
“Right,
right. Never mind: I should be melting
again in a few minutes, then.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
“Hey there, you finish that report yet?”
“Hm? Oh, right, that needs to be sent in today, doesn’t it.”
“…Yes, we’ve talked about it several times this week and once this morning…. Oh, I see you’re working on it now, that’s great! How’s it coming along?”
“It’s… coming along….”
“So, what, you think another page or two left, another hour or two to go?”
“Maybe. Or it might need, you know, another day.”
“Another day?! Where’s your mind at?!”
“I’ve been wondering that myself lately – it seems to be taking a lot trips to the beach recently, and we wind up staying there for hours.”
“Ah. Well, can’t say I blame it.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
“Did you set the security alarm before we left the house today?”
“Hm? I think so, why?”
“Because it’s not beeping as we’re invading our own home.”
“Oh. I must have drifted off on our way out and thought I’d done it. Sorry.”
“Drifted off to what?!”
“To what’s going to happen next on Sword Slash when the season premier airs tonight. They left last season on a cliffhanger and we’ve had to wait more than a year before it finally came back.”
“….”
“Not a fan?”
“We could’ve been burglarized!”
“Eh, no harm
done.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
“So, it’s looking like they might have to pull all the teeth out…. Are you listening to me?!”
“Hm? Oh, yeah, teeth – disgusting.”
“I don’t think you are. Your mind keeps going off places and you’re missing everything that’s going on around you!”
“Sorry; it’s just that I’ve been replaying this scene in my head where my characters finally triumph over the evil they’ve been battling for decades, and I’m trying to iron out the details.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were a writer.”
“…I’m not.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
“Excuse me.”
“Hm? Oh, sorry, I’m being a bit rude, I know – it’s just that my mind tends to wander very, very, very often, and I find myself immersed in all sorts of daydreams that it’s hard to snap myself out of them.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, it can be a bit disruptive sometimes – I don’t always get my work done ‘in a timely manner’ or I miss important information that I’ll need later or I completely breeze through a chore that I’ll have to redo because I didn’t do it thoroughly enough or I find out that an event I went to was a blast but I’ll never know because I’d completely tuned out during the whole thing – but honestly, life can be so tedious and painful and pointless at times that escaping from the futility of it all into a comforting world of our own making truly can be a matter of survival in a sense, don’t you think?”
“I suppose when you put it that way, it can be occasionally, yeah.”
“Thank you! It’s such a relief to finally meet someone who actually understands!”
“Sure.... You can hand over your wallet now.”
“Oh right, we’re in the middle of a robbery – checked out for a few minutes there.”
