Something Absolutely Spectacular

Do you ever get the feeling that you are being watched?

I don’t mean the kind of watched like when  you’re walking along the beach in a thong and people are starring in disbelief, kind of watching, or you managed to squeeze into that spandex exercise suit and it burst its seams on the subway kind of watching either. I mean the kind of watching that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. This is the kind that makes you start looking for a cop even if you are driving while over the legal limit. Thank goodness this rarely happens.

I sometimes have used this kind of starring to my advantage. Picture this, you are in a crowded busy restaurant and the waitress is busy on the other side of the floor ignoring the people over there. How do you get her attention? Well, if you are an older man you just have to stare at her and she will eventually start to look around to see who it is that is creeping her out so much. When her eyes meet yours, you hold up your glass and tap it, telling her in the universal restaurant language “If you don’t get your ass over her with a refill, you can kiss any chance of a tip goodbye!” Of course this ploy won’t work if it happens to be senior’s day at the restaurant, because they know there isn’t a chance of a decent tip anyway.

I don’t mean the creepy kind of watching but the kind where someone is studying you. I have been having this feeling lately. Someone is out there and they are watching me. I could understand it if I were a spy or perhaps a CEO of some high tech firm that is on the cusp of a breakthrough that is destined to revolutionize voting for your favourite contestant on American Idol. I guess that J.K. Rowling went through this before she finished the Harry Potter series. It is kind of weird, but nice in a way as well, because you know that you have done or are doing something well.

I think I am being watched for what I will do in the future. I know, it sounds crazy, but it is the only rational, reasonable, realistic explanation for this feeling. I am not famous; in fact most people including my family have at times pretended that they don’t know me. My dad did this all of the time. There is little or no chance of me developing some incredible advance in …well…anything. I am a pleasant enough kind of guy, but people don’t look at you with a combination of awe and admiration just because you are a pleasant kind of guy. Right? The whole “Rock God” thing just isn’t going to happen. No, it has to be for something that I am going to do.

When you think about it, it does make sense, well, to me anyway. Suppose that you are a grad student or just some rich guy with more money than sense, living at sometime in the distant future. Wouldn’t it be cool to go back and interact with your heroes? I would love to go back about two thousand years or so and have a certain Jewish carpenter make me a stool or a table for me. “Yep!” you would say, “I beat Jesus down one dinarias and two depodius on the price of a stool and a small table! I feel kind of bad though, he didn’t have enough food left to buy dinner for his friends, so in the end I told him I would cover dinner, but it would be the last time.”

How about talking to your favourite dead actor, musician or painter. This is what is happening to me. There are people from the future standing in line at Tim’s with me and having a short, fun conversation that they can tell their unborn kids and grandkids about. There was a woman in the coffee shop today that just couldn’t take her eyes off of me. She must have been too shy to actually talk to me. There might be a time traveler’s directive, which prohibits anything, more than casual interaction. There can be no other explanation for this feeling…right?

I have no idea what it is that I am going to do, but obviously it will be something absolutely spectacular.