Slobber, Slobber.

I am a drooling idiot. I spent this afternoon working on projects at Caribou Coffee. When my mind goes dry, I frequently stare out a window and daydream. I’m embarrassed to admit that I do this quite a bit. One of my favorite daydreams is about someone we’ll call Prototype. In my head I’ve composed the perfect boyfriend. I won’t bore you with all the characteristics. There’s nothing unusual about them. But, to make this daydream work, I have to assign a face to it. Over the years I’ve borrowed several faces, including Brendan Fraser’s and Ben Affleck’s. Understand, Prototype need not actually have any of the characteristics of the person whose face I’ve borrowed. But over the years, as Prototype has evolved, I’ve adopted different faces. The latest face is of someone I’ve met several times over the past ten years. We’ve had a number of mutual friends, but know each other only slightly -- enough to say hello. In the past year, however, I’ve had more exposure to him. We haven't really had anything like a conversation. Let’s just say I’m accutely aware of his existence. And whether its the truth or not, I’ve decided that he possesses a number of the charateristics of Prototype. So, going with the flow, I’ve adopted his face for my little daydreams.

So, to be clear, we have the imagined “Prototype,” and Real Prototype, (RP).

So, this afternoon, while daydreaming out the window about Prototype, his real-life counterpart walked in the door. For a second I was really confused about reality and fantasy. RP lives in a different part of town. He is logically the last person on Earth I’d expect to see on Monday afternoon at Caribou Coffee, but he swooped past my table, not noticing me. I’d say that he doesn’t know I’m alive, but that’s not true. One of Prototype’s characteristics is impeccible manners. This is just one of the parallels with Real Prototype, and so of course RP always says hello when he sees me.

We occupied the same room for nearly an hour while he chatted with a friend and I tried to concentrate on my paper. Just as I’d found a hook into the paper and begun typing, RP slides up to me with his friend and jokes for a minute. There was nothing behind it; he was simply being polite. I managed to control the drool, but I felt myself blush. I tried to include his friend in the conversation, but truthfully I couldn’t have been less interested in him. For the sixty seconds of the conversation there were just two people in the world: the perfect boyfriend and the blushing, drooling idiot.