A Life-Changing Meeting With Dr Odd

I lived in the age of social engagement where we chatted on Blogs and even smiled at dentists before they drilled holes in our teeth: a celebration of biological generosity, spreading our DNA to the four corners of the surgery.  “Being open and friendly,” was MEE.  It’s what I was, regardless of how many teeth I had left. It defined me. It regulated me. It… Oh well you get the picture.

“Making it real,” not letting us become prisoners of our  cultural norms and formalities;”Hanging it out there,”  like it was the last load of washing  before Oblivion visited us in the shape of an impressively large meteorite.   (On that subject, I recall Dr Odd, a notably languid member of the local sub-intelligentsia, saying as his last words, “Impressively large” just before said “Rock” blotted out the sun and then our lives. For the record some noted astronomer was also heard to murmur, “This eclipse is twenty-four years early” as a casual demonstration of academic excellence, which words ended up being his final statement, apart from some screams uttered in the falsetto register which newspapers had no opportunity to record  )

I learnt all this in the waiting room outside the “Infinite Experience”  facility otherwise known Purgatory, before our finale destination was revealed to us,  but that is another story. ( See a previous post ).  This tale concerns me. Did you hear that. Me ME MEEEE. ( Oh God this is fun ) and what I felt about life, you lot, and that troubling pain I got in my wrist every time I tried to use the can-opener; which, to me, was the device which made the difference between starvation and putting on a decent amount of weight  while watching Television: the defining advance in life-style engineering enjoyed by the final generation.

By the way, this rambling post is brought to you courtesy of the “Random-Experience-Process Facilitator ” which I was introduced to at birth. Let me give you an example. I spent a large part of my early employment as a traffic warden, posting tickets on the windscreens of upscale cars. A profession I chose on the basis of material envy, mean-spiritedness and lack of career satisfaction, but which meant I could blight the lives of the successful, until a freak incident catapulted me to national stardom.

During a general election, when politicians were pretending to be nice, and not gloating over their status and fame at the “Your Vice Is Safe With Me Sir” nightclub for decadent Notables,  Sir Reginald Worthless, leader of the “Honest Laundry Party” came across me as I was ticketing his Bentley Continental, while being followed by TV cameras.

In order to make his point, He waved his arm towards me and said, “Should I be elected as  your next Prime Minister, this finely groomed gentleman will become my Minister of Transport. I turned towards the camera, and smiled in a way which says, “I am too modest to reveal everything I understand about life but it’s quite a lot you know,” and somehow I grabbed the public imagination as an example of an extraordinary talent trapped in an ordinary job, house, marriage and salary.

The rest is history, or embarrassment, depending on your point of view, but suffice it to say, after a brief period of notoriety as a minister in Her Majesty’s government  and the chance to explore Vice on the basis of an inflated salary, I was sacked for telling the visiting President of the  United States that his car was parked illegally outside a small hot-dog stand in the West End of London where he was engaged in buying a snack with  small change supplied to him before he left 10 Downing Street, while  smiling for the cameras to show he was just an ordinary guy at heart, albeit one with strong opinions on catering, and integration strategies in a multi-muddled society.

My last words to you before I am moved to my final meeting with Dr Oblivion are . “Just because it is in the brochure, does not mean it’s real”  I was invited to experience the world beyond my station and lived, or died, depending on your perspective,  to enjoy the consequences.