Hands Across American

Dear Neglected Diary. 

  I can't believe I haven't told you this story.  I should have a long time ago.  In fact, I dreamt about it a few weeks ago.  You see lately, my dreams have become my to-do list.  Last night, I dreamt that I cleaned the toilet bowl and took out the trash.  When I was young, I dreamt of being a poet.  Then I went to grad school.

  But let's not get distracted.  A few months ago, Advisor Who, Liz, Geraldine, and me met in Who's office, ostensibly to talk about the course we were teaching, but it was mostly to watch Who spin yarn.  Advisor Who, when he is on a roll with goofy ideas, is a delight to witness.  The meeting began with him assigning nicknames for all of us, he ran out of steam after just two, so Liz got called "the sidekick."  Which devolved into a discussion on kicking and psychics (he likes to keep his pun grounds covered). 

  It would have been too easy to let it end there and gotten back to the syllabus revisions we needed to do.  It would have been wise.  But we instead went on a tangent on this day being Who's late grandmother's birthday (sorry?).  Where do we go from that revelation?  Why of course, a seance.  The perfect bridge between sidekick and psychic.  Who had the 4 of us hold hands around the table "to see if his grandmother would impart any wisdom."  "Are we really doing this?"  I kept asking.  And then I stopped asking.  Because we'd bowed our heads in silence.

  During the entire stretch (it felt like a long while), I kept thinking, "where is he going from here?  Now that he's committed, how could he possibly pull off this gag?"  Of course, he couldn't.  There wasn't anywhere to go after a fake seance.  There was nothing.  We looked up at each other.  "Well, I didn't get anything."  And went back, finally, to the tasks at hand.