What If?

It gets overwhelming and crushing sometimes, life does.  Your shoulders get bruised and heavy and they simply cannot hold even one more tiny burden.  You growl at everyone who looks at you.  You don't want to be this way, you want to be cheerful and helpful like you used to be.

What if the top fairy magician of Whimsyland gently lit upon your burdened right shoulder one night as you were tossing and turning yourself to sleep?  She whispers in your ear.  “You may escape for one day.  You may live twenty-four hours of a different life," she says to you. She's cute, sort of looks like an updated Tinkerbell, with spiked pink hair adorned with the prerequisite tiara.  "Your experience can be whatever you fancy, from any time period.  Choose from deep within the annals of the history of the world, or experience a day from the stark and daring future.  Any location.  Anywhere.  Choose wisely.” A soft tap on your furrowed brow with her magic wand, a tiny sparkle, a wisp of smoke, and you’re gone.  For twenty-four whole hours.  Your high-maintenance children will take care of themselves (hey, this is my fantasy and I can stretch it to the extreme if I want to), your husband can sit in his recliner and watch football, sci-fi, and action movies (not such a stretch), and your mother will not call you to ask about when her next doctor’s appointment is scheduled and complain about her knees.

Hell, yes!  Good-bye!

What would I choose?  Where would I go?  Who would I meet? Who would I be?  I have narrowed it down to some choices that I plan to imagine, maybe as future posts, but not necessarily in this order. 

1. An impressionist painter in Paris, in the late 1800s.
2. A Greenwich Village beatnik. 1953.
3. An ordinary woman who gets to play a role in the American Revolution.
4. A rock star of the 70s.
5. A corporate executive, present day.
6. Maybe a quick jaunt to ancient Egypt would be interesting.  Could I be Cleopatra?
7. Sixteenth century England, but definitely not a wife of Henry the VIII.  

 Yeah, this could be fun.