Do you ever drive somewhere and then get there and realize you have no actual memory of driving there? And you get a little freaked out because you were just behind the wheel of an automobile for at least half an hour with apparently no awareness of where you were or what you were doing? And you’re not really sure whether you should be proud of that fact or terrified?
That totally happened to me today and I decided to go with proud instead of terrified because (a) it IS kind of impressive and (b) if I let myself be terrified I might never drive again, and I can’t afford a chauffeur and buses take too long.
The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that there must be a tiny man living inside me, floating around in a little human-body-ship. My own personal autopilot. For the most part, in between calls, this guy just hangs out, tooling around in his little body-mobile, doing a lap or two to make sure everything’s working properly before returning to his station where he watches the security monitor on one screen and Oprah on another. (You know, a lot like a mall security guard, or that guy at the airport who drives people around in the little cart.)
But then the call comes in – ”She’s zoning out again!” — and the tiny autopilot guy shouts into his tiny walkie-talkie, “I’m on it!” and floats his little ship over to the part of my brain that controls driving, and plugs in or does whatever he does to take control, and then he expertly steers me, steering the car, until I get to where I’m going. And then he unplugs and yells into his walkie-talkie, “Mission accomplished!” or whatever somebody would say in a situation like that, and goes back to Oprah or People magazine until the next time I zone out and he’s needed again.
(I’m assuming that he would yell into the walkie-talkie because it would probably be pretty loud in there with all those whooshing body fluids, but hell, I don’t know, the little ship might be soundproofed so that’s probably not a fair assumption. He might be able to talk in just a regular voice. I really have no idea what kind of funding they had when they built this tiny ship so I couldn’t say.)
It’s just like that 80s movie Innerspace, except I’m pretty sure my tiny autopilot isn’t anywhere near as hot as Dennis Quaid. In fact, the way I’m picturing him he looks a lot like Sammy Davis, Jr. Maybe that’s because I’ve always liked Mr. Bojangles, or maybe because I saw Cannonball Run II like 500 times when I was a kid and Cinemax showed it every waking hour for about five months straight. (I also saw Innerspace at least that many times, for similar reasons, which probably explains this entire theory.)
So at this point I’ve spent most of the day not working and instead developing this complex hypothesis about the tiny Sammy Davis, Jr. autopilot who’s floating around inside my body in a possibly soundproofed human-body-exploring machine. When you think about it, it’s really pretty amazing. I mean, without tiny Sammy Davis, Jr. looking out for me, I could have had a terrible accident on the way to work this morning.
And instead of spending my day wrapped up in the various issues obviously associated with all of this (like whether it’s really ethical for someone to inject a tiny person into me without my knowledge or consent, or HOW tiny Sammy Davis, Jr. was even put there in the first place – I’m guessing it would have to be through some kind of orifice, but which one? And when? And do I really want to know?), I’d be talking to police and insurance agents and rental car guys, and that would have been SUCH a pain in the ass. Not to mention, I could have been really hurt or something.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is, Thank You, Tiny Sammy Davis, Jr. I owe you one.