Alone and Unobserved

You know, that thing where I agreed a month ago to work a closing shift but I forgot this morning and so I dragged myself out of bed and all the way to work only to find out I’m not supposed to be here for another couple of hours and I could have slept in?

Yes.

On my way to work I made the mistake of having a thought while still in my not-yet-awake, overtired, uncaffeinated state, which is always a bad idea for me. Because then that thought—or part of it—echoes in the hollow space inside my skull FOREVER, or until I get coffee and wake up, whichever comes first. Some mornings it’ll be a snippet of a song (“I can’t stop loving the MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop loving that MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop…”). Other mornings it’ll just be a phrase, or a word (“Biblioteca. BiblioTECa. BIBILIOTECA. biblioteca.”). This morning it was “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça” (“why they would have done that,” in French). Not even a complete sentence. So I walked to the bus, accompanied by a regular refrain of “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi…” This got a bit boring and repetitive, so I mixed it up: “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi…”

So you see why sleeping in might have been a good idea this morning.

[Note: I am aware that "Pourquoi ils auraient fait ça?" can be a complete sentence in French. You'll just have to trust me that the intonation of the phrase that repeated itself over and over and over in my head this morning ruled out that possibility.]