Wednesday, January 04, 2006

The year begins hypothetically

Instead of resolutions, this year I offer a list of questions that may help explain why I tend to be kind of a skeptic. Because if I really believed in anything that didn't have hard scientific evidence, these sorts of thoughts would plague me.

Anyway, let the hypothetical crap begin.

How do you know that weren't born a squirrel but switched bodies with a human for a predetermined amount of time, and your lease ends tomorrow? (Naturally, during your human time you would have wanted to forget the fact that you were really a squirrel, so temporarily erasing your squirrel-memory would have been part of the arrangement.)

How do you know that you're not a character in someone else's dream? (The good news is that this person is in a coma. The bad news is it's just a food coma.)

How do you know that you never wished chicken pox on someone, got your wish fulfilled, and then wished to forget you ever wished it?

(If you were born on or after April 5, 1994) How do you know that you weren't once a world-famous garage band frontman who decided to end it all but was offered an opportunity to live a brand new life with no knowledge of your previous one?

How do you know you didn't give up a portion of your brain to find a cure for avian flu, but the cure never panned out and you never got the piece of your brain back? Naturally, it's the piece of brain that remembers the whole thing happening.

(If you're living on less money than you'd like) How do you know you weren't once fabulously wealthy but had a really annoying hangnail that just wouldn't go away, and it eventually drove you crazy enough that you paid a witch doctor to cure it in exchange for all your money? Naturally, blacking out your memories of being rich was part of the deal.

How do you know you weren't born with the highest IQ of any human being in history, with the potential to solve all the world's social and political ills, but lost it all the moment your umbilical cord was cut?

(This one I first thought of well over a decade ago.) How do you know you don't have a rewind button for your life, but it's only the size of a regular rewind button and is located on a tree somewhere in Nebraska?

How do you know that every time you go to bed, you sleep for a whole year, but the rest of the world acts like only a day has gone by to prevent you from feeling left out?

And finally...

How do you know that you couldn't cause every Starbucks on earth to spontaneously combust by concentrating really hard on a piece of celery for a couple of hours?

* * *

Well, there you have it. Welcome to 2006. Just thought I'd start if off a little differently.

1 comment:

Eti said...

I actually know the umbilical cord thing to be true for sure; it’s on my birth certificate.

Then again, maybe it was just that I was the smartest squirrel alive and the only remnants of my squirrel memory are secretly hidden inside an acorn painting on an acorn farm in Ohio. Ahhh, destiny! Or something.