So This Is It Then?

Yesterday was a very Wuthering Heights-ish sort of day. The steady rain coupled with the wind-tossed trees and pouty sky set picturesquely against the vivid organic hues of the surrounding foliage was something even Emily Bronte couldn’t have made up. A day designed for drama.

A meeting at work forced me to eat lunch late yesterday afternoon, and I enjoyed sitting in the empty cafeteria of my office building mindlessly admiring the outdoor ambiance through the cathedral windows. Ah me, so beautiful are the unhewn English moors.

The rest of that afternoon I looked forward to cracking open the nice bottle of red wine sitting on my kitchen counter and having a glass while curled up on the sofa with War and Peace. At least that’s what I told myself.

Too bad I’m such a liar.

As I was walking home from the el after work, I glanced down at my cell phone to check the time. It was five forty-five.

‘Yes!’ I thought to myself doing a mental arm-pump as I switched the ringer on my phone to silent, ‘Simpsons are on at six.’

That’s what I did last night. I turned my phone off so there’d be no opportunity to interact with the outside world and watched TV. In my defense I spent part of that time making dinner, but that only took about an hour.

After completing my food preparation activities, I cozied up in front of the TV with a glass of wine and noted to myself for the fortieth time that day that I didn’t feel good. No biggie, just a cold. But illness makes me lazy and intolerant of all minor annoyances.

‘No way I can read tonight,’ I thought as I took a lingering sip of wine, ‘I can feel a slight twinge above my left eye. Not a full-blown headache, but there’s definitely something there.’

So I picked up the remote and flipped through my eleven channels:

2 CBS – ‘Two and a Half Men’ – yuck.
5 NBC – some crime show – yawn.
7 ABC – ‘Wife Swap’ – hate reality television.
9 WGN – another crime show – yeesh.
11 WTTW PBS – ‘Chicago Tonight’ – have secret crush on Phil Ponce, but not in the mood.
71 Slightly crappier PBS station – ‘Antiques Road Show’ – already seen that episode.
77 Channel that for some reason shows constant loop of ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ – eh.
79 Korean Channel – Static. For the love of God! Come back to me already!
83 FOX – another crime show
91 Spanish Channel – thin, breasty woman shouting into a microphone – looks compelling, but need subtitles or need to learn Spanish.
109 Infomercial Channel – So sick of Ron Popeil telling me what to do.

That’s when I suddenly remembered that there should be a netflix movie sitting in my mailbox.

‘I’m saved!’ I thought joyously and poured another glass of wine to celebrate.

Out of habit, I flipped mindlessly through the set of channels again stopping on channel seven. Wife Swap. It still looked annoying, but I told myself that I’d run outside at the next commercial break to get the movie.

The commercial break came, and I was about to get up when I realized that a commercial I liked was on. The Holiday Inn one.

“I got a unicycle for my son,” I repeated out loud. Then I laughed noisily and took another sip of my wine.

By the time I’d recovered, the break was over and the show back on. When the second commercial break came, I was forced to admit that I’d been reeled in. Bastards. I reconciled myself to finishing the episode.

I’ve never seen this show before, but I’m sure you can tell by the title what the premise is. Essentially two moms switch families for two weeks. The first week they follow all of the rules of the household they are visiting. The second week, they change the rules to align with their preferences based on what they’ve seen. It wasn’t really the premise that I was drawn to, though. It was seeing the people make idiots of themselves on camera. In the episode I saw, one family was from rural Wisconsin and the other was from Florida. The family from Wisconsin had four sons and a daughter. They were a nice family, and, accordingly, of no interest to me. What I found fascinating was the family from Florida. The father was a retired model.

I’m confident that if the father were to undergo testing it would be discovered that he is legally retarded. He treated the woman from Wisconsin horribly, but I’m convinced that it wasn’t because he was filled with hatred. It was more like he had the mentality and reasoning capabilities of an eight year-old. His cruelty was of the thoughtless variety, and, by the frequent looks he cast at the camera, you got the impression that he assumed everyone in the TV audience was commiserating with him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone make such a total ass of himself.

His wife was a little less terrible, because overall she seemed nice. She got along well with the Wisconsin family (though it would have been tough not to). Mostly, she was just mired in delusion. She created a girl pop singing group for her eleven-year-old daughter who she hopes will someday be an uber-celeb. At one point during the show she proclaimed that creating the band was her version of giving-back to society (note that the entire Wisconsin family spent their free-time being volunteer EMT’s). She spent a majority of the show declaring that she felt sorry for the Wisconsin family for being satisfied with the mediocrity of their lives and not ‘shooting for the stars’.

So that’s what I did last night. Instead of bettering my mind through reading or at the very least doing laundry, I watched two episodes of ‘Wife Swap.’ Towards the end of the second episode, I glanced over at the bottle of wine and realized that my ‘one glass’ had turned into half of a bottle.

I had trouble falling asleep because my wasted evening made me feel depressed. I kept wondering if this was going to be the rest of my life. Eight hours a day under fluorescent lighting. Three hours spent on a train. Occasional wisps of happiness.* Then, idiotic TV shows that have no purpose other than to enable me to laugh voyeuristically at what I perceive to be other’s stupidity.

*The Simpsons.

Though I’d never admit this, I think that deep down I’d always assumed I’d be famous. Not for anything specific or because of a consciously concerted effort on my part, but mostly just because I used to suffer from delusions of grandeur. I wonder when they disappeared. I miss them.

In my younger days, I’d assumed that just weeks after moving to Chicago a handsome/unthreatening man would approach me on the street and say something along the lines of:

“Well, look at you.”

“Pardon?” I’d ask gazing at him in a perplexed manner.

He’d gesture vaguely at the air between us, “Just … look at you. You’re fantastic.”

My fantasy-self is demure and modest. So rather than respond in the affirmative I would focus my attention on a crack in the sidewalk and blush in a way that would only make me prettier.

He would offer to take me out for an early dinner at NoMi where we would sit at a table overlooking Michigan Avenue and make plans on how to leverage off of my talent for being so awesome. Throughout all of this we would be sipping champagne and devouring thousands of dollars worth of caviar.

A few weeks later, I’d be the celebrity guest on 'Chicago Tonight' where I’d discuss my opinions on everything in a way that lets everyone know how remarkably intelligent and even-handed I am. Phil Ponce would fall in love with me, but I’d tell him (regretfully) that I’m already engaged to Mark Prior or John Cusack or Bill Murray or whoever. I’m not picky.

The following week, my fiancé and I would purchase the Nepalese Embassy on Lakeshore Drive, which we would tastefully convert into our mansion/love nest.

That’s as far as I’ve fleshed out my fantasy, but you get the picture ... Oh wait! Also, there’d be an enormous billboard of me right across the street from the Merchandise Mart hocking something, like maybe Cartier watches or some new sophisticated brand of tequila.

By contrast, you can see why an evening of too much wine and inane/mean-spirited TV would bum me out. My broken delusions of grandeur are ruining everything. So, tonight I have to do something productive to make myself feel better. Like maybe finish off that bottle of wine and watch that movie from Netflix. Yes. That'll do.

-Exceeding my ExpeKtations