Saturday night, Isabelle's brother called her at 1:00 AM to tell her he couldn't sleep.
Normally this would mean a massive drug binge of some sort had ensued, but Isabelle and her family are from Michigan where I imagine people don't do drugs, but rather gather around with their families on Saturday nights to play board games and sing songs about Jesus.
No, her brother couldn't sleep because he was just too jazzed about getting to meet some dude from Blink 182. This sounded insane to me, because I can't even imagine being so excited about anything that it would prevent me from sleeping. I can imagine laying in bed at night staring at the ceiling, my heart beating a million miles a minute, wondering when the speed would wear off... but natural excitement? That's crazy talk.
Isabelle tried to explain it to me. She said "Carmela, this is he idol. The man he WORSHIPS. It would be like if you got to meet... um... Satan."
Then I totally got it. It would be SO COOL if I got to meet Satan! There are just so many things I would want to ask him! Like what his favorite drink is at Starbucks, and what he was thinking about when he created Hoboken.
I'd probably be so flustered with excitement, I wouldn't even be able to get any of my questions out... I'd be lucky if I managed to tell him how much I love his work.
Maybe we'd get to spend the whole day together! We could do some light shopping at all of our favorite stores, and hold hands and skip though a sun dappled field, kicking puppies and infants out of our way as we went.
We'd sniff out some rocky marriages and break them up... Maybe tell some children that Santa Claus isn't real and that their parents only had them because they were bored with each other and lonely.
If I was really good, maybe Satan would let me help him with that pop up on peoples shoulders thing he does. Like someone would be in a major moral debate... thinking to himself "Hmmm, I just found this wallet with a thousand dollars and some chicks driver's licence with her address in it, I wonder what I should do?"
And then Satan would appear on his shoulder and say "Take the money! Take all of it and ditch the wallet! You know you want to!" And then I'd appear on his other shoulder and be like "Totally! And after you take the money, you should go to her house and rape her!"
And then we'd high five each other.
I know he'd want to meet my cats, so he could come over and we'd hang out with them for a while. Then maybe have a nice steak dinner at a romantic little candle lit restaurant with over worked, underpaid, Mexican waitstaff we could taunt and poke with sticks. Then we could take the left overs, find a homeless person, and eat them in fron tof him.
If it was OK with Satan, I'd really love to introduce him to Anoosh. It would be so nice if the two most important men in my life could get to know each other. I bet they'd get along so well. I'd tell him "I know this is our special day together, but there's someone i'd like for you to meet, because from the second I met him he totally reminded me of you."
After that, maybe a night out clubbing! We could start with baby seals and work our way up to small people.
