HONESTY: SHWOOP!

Last Thursday I developed a game called OPERATION: THERE ARE NO PEOPLE. Do you ever feel like running, how glorious it is to get lost in winding French streets, to see the swans on the river in the afternoon sun, to feel like you're flying along like a space ship to a soundtrack of Daft Punk, or to sometimes listen to the ever comforting wind. And to stretch your lungs! Then later on to be rewarded with that satisfying ache in your abs. You're about to jump into running heaven but then you're dragged back down as you think about all the people that are out in the world. Their eyes weigh down upon you as all the humans leer over you. I'm not concerned so much about their judgment as I am about their mere existence. I sense them out there, everywhere and it drives me batty like when something is making your skin crawl because it's not quite touching you but you can sense it. THEY'RE OUT THERE! THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE EVERYWHERE AND I CAN'T THINK OF EVEN ONE ROAD I CAN RUN ON WITHOUT THE RISK OF SEEING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.

It's the worst.

It's the incarnation of the nightmare where you're running away from something and people keep looming into the picture. They just won't go away.

Now personally, truly deeply, I like people. Nay, I love people. I cry at the end of It's a Wonderful Life not as much for the story itself (though I do find it a bit depressing despite the really great ending and Clarence's funny voice. Can't the Bailey's ever get out of Bedford? Just for a vacation? Please?) but because I think of all the people who worked on the film from Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart down to the Continuity Girl and Best Boy and every uncredited P.A. And on top of all that, there's all the people who have watched it over the decades. Decades of people united by sharing that story, the tender moments it procures, and then it gets absorbed into their lives. ALL those wonderful lives. There are so many, so so many.

But sometimes I just want there to be nothing. The universe is expanding and someday, maybe ten billion years from now, stars will be so far away we won't be able to see them. I love stars. I love joining in with my family in struggling to get my dad's telescope set up at our cabin in the mountains so we can see more stars, see more of the moon, imagine ourselves in deep space. But I'd really love to come back in ten billion years and take a walk through the darkest nights. It sounds like a whole other realm of beautiful and peaceful.

But last Thursday, I realized there's no reason that can't be happening now inside my strange brain. When the nightmare of streets lined with square trees and people looming about appeared in my mind's eye, shwoop! I wiped them all away. I pulled up another street, shwoop! All those people can be gone too! NO MORE PEOPLE! I CAN WIPE THEM ALL AWAY! And then when needed, I can pull down a canopy of starless night and fly into my sweet abyss.



(For those wondering, this follows closely on the heals of OPERATION: I'M A WHALE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN and OPERATION: PEOPLE ARE LLAMAS TOO.)

What operations have you had or conducted in your life? Are you a fan of general anesthetic? Do you have any embarrassing stories you need to share with me? I'm here for you.