A Star Wars Fable

So, let's say that you or someone you know (but certainly not me) was the kind of dutiful, loyal person who always did just what was expected. This unnamed person gets up at 5 a.m, catches a 6:30 train, works from 8:00-5 or 5:30, then returns home by 7:00 pm. She/he also volunteers 20 hours a week to mentor youth, who have decided that she/he is their very bestest friend and need to talk to him/her as often as humanly possible. Let's also say that she/he has been very tired lately and very, very frustrated by the fact that his/her life no longer has him/her in it.

Furthermore, this person has become haunted by stress dreams. These dreams could be either:

1. He/she tries to buy his/her Metrolink pass but has forgotten the concept of money. The people riot and begin to throw things as the train speeds out of the station; or
2. He/she goes on vacation and forgets to tell work. Her pager goes off in mid-flight, but she can't answer it. Soon all the phones on all the seats start ringing. The flight attendant comes over and yells at her/him for disturbing the rest of all the passengers.

(Of course, I would never have such pathological dreams, so stop pretending this is story about me. It's a hypothetical, obviously, because no gender has been expressed. So it can't be me, see. It's also a fable, so the person is really an animal. I'm a human; that's not an animal.)

This person has finally reached her limit. The 500 phone calls, 3,000 pages and 4 billion people demanding attention has finally pushed her/him over the edge. On Wednesday, May 18, let's conjecture, was the day the final straw had dropped, as they (not us, we would never use mixed colloquialisms) say. Perhaps this overworked person's boss could call and say something like, "You just need to make yourself more available..." and this person would de-evolve at that moment into a gorilla, perch on her desk and throw paper at her coworkers until the zoo people arrived. Then the zoo people would say, "We can't give you a sedative because you have jury duty tomorrow and then the Young Women Achievement awards, so you had better just grow that opposable thumb and stop whining about never having any time to yourself because no one should be so selfish and you have 3 hours on a train anyway - who could possibly need more relaxation? Sheesh. Gorillas are so insensitive. Other people have busy lives, too."

As we all know that guilt is the truest indication of humanity, our friend would have certainly turned back into a person and be sobbing hysterically because of two horrible facts:

May 19th was Star Wars Day and she would have no time to see it.

This imaginary someone would be in the depths of depression because Star Wars was the first movie she had seen in her whole movie-loving life. She had seen every premiere on either the 1st or 2nd day - including all the re-releases. And even though she wasn't exactly a die-hard... (perhaps she had even had this conversation with her sister that week:

"Yeah, it supposedly has those, like, Chewbacca-like guys in it." she might have said.

Her sister might have sighed in that exasperated way reserved for moments where the sibling forgot common knowledge things like the 3rd law of Relativity and the exact geopolitical influences at the midpoint of the Franco-Prussian war, and stated, "Wookies. They're called Wookies.")...it would still be crushing to miss the very last premiere.

So, with heavy heart, slightly elongated arms and a prominent brow line, the heroine sets off for jury duty. She stops to throw leaves every so often, just to let the animal kingdom know who is in charge.

When she arrives at the Courthouse (it is a sign of a well-lived life that she gets lost twice and doesn't know which building to enter), a lovely message greets her: Jury Duty postponed until 11:00. My, oh my, what could a girl do for 3 hours on Star Wars Day?

Skipping along, she arrives at the theater. Since the movie is playing every 15 minutes all day, she jumps into the nearest line. She loves the movie and all the little animals viewing it with her.

At 50% maximum joy, she returns to the Courthouse. New message: Jury Duty cancelled. Please collect your proof of service at front desk.

What felicity! Her arms shrunk back to 1/2 normal size, she collected a disability parking sticker, and went back to the Star Wars festivities. At around 2:00, she could resist no longer. She saw the movie again...and she still liked it.

The poor little overworked girl now felt happy. Seeing Star Wars really was all she wanted. She went back to work and apologized for the shredded paper.