Sans Screen, SPF 1366 x 768, Part I

I'm the cute one.

A friend of mine who owes me money was recently lauding me for the near-metronomic rhythm of my posts. She likened me to a bouncing ball, with its steady, dependable cadence, just randomly striking the keyboard until it finally depresses "Publish Post", and in turn, all of my readers. But notable as of late was my six-day absence. "omg wtfru? ru ok? ttyl," read her tersely-lettered text. It was then I realized I'd completely missed her 14th birthday.

But li'l Stacy wasn't the only devotee who felt the void. I received tens* of inquiries into my whereabouts. Did I fake my death to escape scrutiny and ultimately incarceration as a result of my shady dealings with the printer who ruined my business cards by omitting the "h" in "johnatron"? Of course not. I faked his death. Was I kidnapped by a tribe of lost children who broke free from an exploitative Fox reality show called Adolescent Peninsula? Or maybe the stress of the job got to me, and I flew the coop to Australia where I'm now living a life both foreign and exotic - as an Australian blogger.

Most often it's the simplest explanation that is the right one. I was kidnapped by children.

They took me to their hut in the forest where I was ridiculed for my gargantuan stature. Not a teen amongst them, they cackled with glee, encircling and spinning around me in a dizzying array of LOLs and LMFAOs. "Forsooth! The monster hath arms what dangle as a common tree ape!" (I did mention the show aired on Fox-Middle English, no?) The Lilliputians were horrid captors, alternately forcing me to play Nintendo DS and explain what kissing feels like.

The first night was the longest - the Winter Solstice (normally falling on December 21st, it was pushed back a month to coincide with the Presidential Inauguration). They braided my hair, and adorned me in their native garb, mostly Aeropostale. I listened in awe as the girls spoke in admiration of the one they called 'Ryan Gosling'. Meanwhile the boys huddled around an edge-tattered magazine photo of Hayley Duff, about whom one offered, "she's pretty like Mommy." With Capri-Sun heavy on their breath and an air of pants a-wetted, the tiny ones slept.

Morning. We woke to the unmistakable glow of Yo! Gabba Gabba on the 37" Panasonic LCD. We sat Native American-style, mouths agape, backs hunched, and stared. Hours passed. The littlest among them, I called her Carla for it was her name, presented me with a flower she took back, Native American-style, from Dylan, the boy she used to like but who seemed to be ignoring her the past couple days. I thanked her, and patted her head, to which she responded, "ouch, get off." Which is so Carla, by the way. Later, Kyle asked if I wanted to race around the Mushroom Bridge. My spirits were suddenly buoyed! Where was this idyllic bridge? Had I stumbled, hostage-style, upon a utopian cluster of star children? In my head I saw the next half-century of my life, teaching these youths the ways of the world, while steeping myself in their innocence!

As I gazed into the cloudless sky, mind adrift in our Halcyon days to come, Kyle informed me that the Mushroom Bridge was a track in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

Well that was all I could take. Indignation boiled in my veins. I erupted upwards, breaking from the chains I voluntarily self-styled out of sinewy vines I collected throughout the morning, barking primal growly sounds - all vowels, none of those pesky consonants. As I towered over the now-shaking kidlets, I wondered who is the real monster here? Is it I, grazing the vaulted sky at 180 centimeters, all of my 75 kilograms trembling the earth beneath? Or could it be I was a slave to these digital child-demons?

But then it struck me. I was enslaved with them. We were all lowly subjects of The Screen. As though waking from a dream only to find oneself in a nightmare, I surveyed my landscape. I wasn't in a forest hut at all! I was in nine-year old Jacob McCovey's trailer! My woodland friends, Ashlee, Noah and Shyla were actually "Ashlee", "Noah" and "Shyla" - co-stars of Fox's exploitative reality show Adolescent Peninsula! And the screens - oh, the screens! Sony Bravias® here, 3.5" OLED cellulars there! Oh how we basked in the diodes!

Rather than fight, I fled. I had to toss Cody to the ground to get to the door, for which I fully expect a suit to be filed, but it was barely a blip on the radar of what was really wrong with the scene. I ran for what seemed like days but was only about thirty yards, as a cab was waiting just off the set.

"Take me to Time-Warner Studios. And step on it. I have lives to save."

When he informed me he wouldn't be doing that, I settled for my one-story ranch in Cinnaminson. My google-machine was about to get a work-out.

* 'Zero' is a 'ten', right?