Across the Country

Chapter 1: Stand Up and Break a Leg

I stand up from my seat, take a swig from my water bottle, as hundreds of people waited in their seats, waiting for my comedic acts. Years of comedy, and yet I still have stage fright. My stage manager, Alex, walked up to me. "Relax, you got this." He said, patting my back, as I walked towards the crimson curtains that covered me from view. 

I walk up to the stage, and the lights shine on me as the crowd of 200 people cheered. I look around the audience, happy that that many people cared to come out and spend loads of money for seating to my performance. 

I grab the microphone, and shout, "Macaroni!" The crowd burst out into laughter, as I said; "Sorry, just testing!" 

I begin my stand up comedy routine.

"Facebook.com, something us gen-z ers would consider a relic compared to the plethora of social media apps around today.... something we left behind saying, hey mom, hey grandpa, this is your problem now, have fun."

"But since turning 19 I have been looking back at the 2014, 15s , even feeling nostalgic,a it was in this period I realized that Facebook wasn't just a past time anymore, but now apart of our culture. When you look at it Facebook was SOOO perfect, all those unrelatable minion memes and the bottomless pool of handsome and charming Indian males looking for love with names almost unpronounceable by English speakers MUAH!..."

It's mechanical creator, Mark Zuckerberg couldn't make it any better.

Facebook inspired so much growth and change, like, depression rates couldn't be any higher, the rope and razor blade industry was booming, there was even this fun trend going around where girls were drawing lines on their forearms...so trendy.

But the most important thing of all that Facebook really affected was the high school social hierarchy, and, and this is where things kinda get fucked for me because going into the seventh grade I was firm on the belief that if I was good looking, could sing and play basketball I would be popular, based on watching the high school musical movies 6 times respectively

And God I wasted so much time going to vocal classes and basketball practice at the community center and years later I still feel like an idiot for telling the guys to call me Troy, but thank God there was that mercury leak in community center's water supply a year after I I stopped training ..... because oh fuck, I don't know what I would do if people still called me Troy, oh I loathed it.

So now, popularity was based on Facebook likes, if you got a hundred likes on a pic, you were mildly popular, 500, you were popular, a 1000 or more likes, hey, why not get your own fucking star on Hollywood boulevard?" I roll my eyes, and the crowd laughs.

But in my pursuit of popularity, I soon realised that it's not that easy to get likes.......simply tagging a hundred persons in your pic doesn't guarantee that a hundred persons will like your pic, hell, in my case, doesn't guarantee two....

But this was everything to me, I don't care about going to school and becoming a plumber or a "doctor" or whatever, I just wanted to peak in highschool.......

anda this time, I had no idea that I had to put effort by taking pics other that selfies after a shower..... but...... being a firm believer in earning what you deserve with hard work.......

I searched tirelessly for a Facebook autolike bot and after clearing hundreds of popup ads and not succuming to the messages of many single moms in my area, sadly I couldn't find an autolike bot that worked.

So fast fast forward five years later and I've never achieved my dream of being popular..

At 19 years I'm barreling in the pits of the social ladder, hoping that one day i'll achieve this, so at this point in time, im trying my hand at the fastest growing social media app of 2020,

Vine.

The crowd exploded into laughter at my routine, and I saw one person in particular. He had a blue hoodie, and a blue visor covering his face. I saw him, and we made eye contact, as I continued my next comedy routine.

"Life has a fetish for kicking you in the nuts.

Call it a sick sense of humor, a cosmic prankster attitude; whatever tickles your shmancy. Life stalks you, waits for the perfect opportunity when you're happy and content with your place in the universe, and then proceeds with dashing out of its proverbial bushes and delivering a picture perfect punt to your crotch, that sends your balls shooting through the top of your skull, giving them a one way ticket to the stratosphere.

I think that's the secret of life. To reach a spot when you're just comfortable enough to dare and think to yourself 'hey, this is kind of nice', only to have some poetic bullshit happen to you that yanks you back to Earth and reminds you that you're just an unlucky meat bag like the rest of 'um.

Rinse and repeat. The loop keeps going on and on, the stratosphere is full of balls just floating around our planet and nothing ever changes. Not sure what happens to women, I'm scared to think about that.

No need to go to Mars. No need to find enlightenment. No need for DMT, or any other abbreviated scary drug. There you go; secret of life, solved by a random schmuck, with too much caffeine in his system, and mild childhood trauma."

The crowd laughed even harder.

I went to my final comedy routine.

"I'm not really here with you right now - I'm just sleepwalking between two snoozes from my alarm clock.

Well, you might think it sounds pretty crazy, but hey - what if we all - right now - exist between snoozes?

Even the most celebrated scientists and cosmologists disagree on what reality is. So, snoozing is as good a guess as anything, in my humble view. And believe me - I've done a lot of research on this matter...

So, if we all right now exist between two snoozes I've found the optimum interval for the time-space continuum: it's 9 minutes, the perfect snooze interval; short enough to feel reality bite, and long enough to drift off again and explore other dimensions.

People who aren't snoozing are missing out on all the fun it is to take out your angst and anxiety of living on that poor ringing alarm clock of yours. It's better than any coaching session you'll ever pay for. You can also blame it for coming late for work, being moody and grumpy, not inspired and - actually - pretty much anything you can think of.

Remember that tired colleague at the office yesterday? Well, I bet that person is on a 3 minute snooze interval. It just doesn't work; they are likely to be the kind of people who think they can have it all; like sleep-walkers, going on inter-dimensional explorations while their partner goes downstairs to make packed lunch for the kids. That's not how it works. You have to take it seriously, and fully commit to your existence between the snoozes.

See, next time you hear that alarm bell interrupt your travels - look around you and see if you've arrived at the right place, at the right time, or you just hit that snooze button again, and again, until it feels right. Only then will you realize that your daily dose of awareness is merely a transit to your next true adventure.

If you snooze you'll never loose - happy travels my friends!"

The crowd laughed the hardest, and the blue hoodie dude cracked a smile as well. I say goodbye to Valencia, California, and head back to Alex behind the curtain, as the people filed out of the stadium. 

Alex started "You did good!" He said, as he brought me along to my car, and my driver drove me off to my hotel. At least tomorrow I could go to Magic Mountain.