out of england: May 2017

Wednesday 10 May 2017

HE JUST WANTS TO ELECTROCUTE PEOPLE

What a weird thing. I was having a dream last night. Most of the details are sketchy now, of course. But I remember something about a woman explaining how she and her husband had unwittingly strayed into a diving bell which then plummeted from a crane on a ship and into deep, green water. The next thing I knew, I was watching a TV documentary. Some guy was in his garden and was constructing what looked like a barbed wire fence, beyond which was open countryside. The voiceover explained that he was a trained electrician and that he "was using his skills to protect his property and his family". I turned away from the TV and scoffed: "Using his skills to protect his family? No, he just wants to electrocute people." My audience of one: my son. He didn't laugh, so I kept repeating: "He just wants to electrocute people." With each repetition, I made my voice more and more ridiculous, contorting my usual accent into an arch, knowing parody of the TV voiceover. My son refused to laugh and tried to leave the room. I blocked his path and kept repeating my line over and over: "He just wants to electrocute people, he just wants to electrocute people..." The more determined my son was not to laugh, the funnier I found the whole thing.

Then I woke up laughing. My wife thought I was crying and asked me what was wrong. I tried to explain the dream but couldn't get my words out because I was laughing too hard. She was initially amused by the state of me, but soon grew tired of it. I briefly considered the idea of repeating the line "He just wants to electrocute people" in an increasingly demented and annoying voice. But I thought better of it.

After that, I couldn't sleep. So I went to the living room to read. I kept laughing for quite a while. Something wrong with me, I guess. In the morning I told my son about it. He listened with rapt attention and found it funny. So it worked out OK.