Reality

Reality

I have just spent the absolute worst month of my life.  I have no one to blame, unless you count the person who invented the internet.  Maybe even the person who invented the television.  Whichever.

I think the real starting point was when I was doing a marathon cut-the-expenses online search.  I started with coupon downloads for about an hour.  I’d just finished printing off the last of them when it occurred to me that I’d probably cost myself more for the ink to print than I would save.  So much for that idea.

I remember looking at my checkbook again and sighing.  With the most recent gas hike, there was no way I was going to be able to meet my tuition this semester.  I needed an extra $375.00 or I was not going to be able to graduate when I planned.  Somehow I didn’t think that spending the money to use 750 fifty-cent coupons was going to do it.  I needed to go at this smarter.

I made a list of my major bills on a piece of paper and crossed off the ones I couldn’t change, like my apartment rent and car payment.  I couldn’t move or get a cheaper car in time to do me any good.  OK, what was left?  I could get a monthly bus pass to get back and forth to campus.  Absolutely NO MORE McDONALD’S!!!  That should be good for at least $100.  I didn’t stop to wonder whether I could stick to it, or not.  Surely, if I didn’t take any cash with me, I couldn’t spend it, right?

Glancing over the list, I found one more area where I could cut costs, maybe.  I started with Google, and then spent the next three hours searching websites.  That was my big mistake.

The next morning, I woke up cranky.  I hadn’t slept well after I’d finally made it to bed.  Some jerk in the building had left his TV on, and the louder commercials had kept me from sinking in to a deep sleep.

By the end of three weeks, I looked awful.  I had bags under the suitcases under the briefcases under my eyes.  Those same eyes were bloodshot from those damned commercials every night that were just loud enough to disturb me.  My hands shook with all the caffeine I’d consumed daily trying to stay awake enough at work and in class.  I decided that tonight I would find the jerk who was keeping me awake, even if I had to prowl the halls all night.

It didn’t work.  I hid on landings until I started to doze off, then I walked the halls until my head was spinning and my feet were killing me.  It figures; the one night I was hunting him, he’d decided to turn the set off.  At 2:30 in the morning, it finally hit me that, if the guy’s set was off, then I could sleep.  Duh!  I hurried to my door, fumbled the keys out of my pocket and walked inside. 

No sooner had I settled under the covers than I heard it; that annoying voice.  I felt a rush of fury and threw myself out of bed to go give that guy the lecture of his life.  I made it to the end of my bed before I stopped so quickly that I tripped over my own feet and ended up face down on the carpet, badly scraping the end of my nose.

I lifted my head up and stared at the apparition in front of my face.  It was all green, and no taller than six inches.  Those black button eyes twinkled at me and then he, um, it?  It started talking to me.  I recognized him instantly, of course.  I was too shook to say anything, but my thoughts raced. 

I finally came to the conclusion that the internet search had done it.  So many people used it everyday and really, really believed in the ‘Information Highway’ and virtual worlds that they had come true, able to materialize outside of the electron paths into the human world.  Things would never be the same, for me or anyone else.

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Actually I figured all that out the next day.  I was too busy hating computers until then to think clearly.  Besides, how could anyone think with a diminutive gecko chatting away at you for four hours in that annoying Aussie accent about saving money on your car insurance?