Your Face Here

At my favorite message board, there are several posters whose backs get up when people ask "am I the only one who..." and they insist that the answer is always no. But over the years I've been told flat out several times that sometimes it is just me. Or just me and Vynce, actually since lil bro and I tend to think a lot alike. A college friend who knew us both once exclaimed, "You are both so funny. What did your parents do to you?!" Uh, I don't exactly know, but both our parents have mental illnesses (as a further aside, the fact that neither of us does fascinates one of our parents' doctors. We're "amazingly well adjusted" if quirky), so I'm sure our unique outlook is a type of coping mechanism.

Anyway...Does anyone else insert people they're not exactly infatuated with yet into their daydreams? (the type of person you're superficially attracted to, but know nothing much about) I don't mean into sexual fantasies, or at least not only, but the dreaming-of-a-happy-future kind be that might mean being successful or having a nice family of your own. Or, you know, revenge fantasies of the "the best revenge is living well ilk" - other not particularly confrontational people have that sort of daydream too, don't they? Pettily showing people up by being happier than them is sort of fun to think about. These day dreams aren't actually about the person who is in them, but they get a bit part in the kind of daydream you'd have anyway.

I tend to think of people like this as "face people" since they're the fantasy equivalent of a cardboard cutout before you get to know them well enough to imagine them do anything other than being there, but I'm pretty sure that the word I'm looking for is avatar. No, not that over-rated ripoff of Fern Gully, but in the Hinduism or computing sense - a representation/manifestation of something, in this case being a representation of Mr. May He'll Do. I've said before that I don't get much out of imagining people I've never met, so I tend to use people I know in real life as props in those mental vacations that help me sleep or get though another boring hour at work.

Sometimes you get to know one of the props better, and that strips them of that status because you lose interest completely, or it moves them into the realm of being in your imaginings because you actually do like them and then they get dialogue and everything.

So, is it just me? It's okay if it is. I expect a lot of guys not to know what I mean since guys I know swear their daydreams aren't as "scripted" as women's tend to be. I asked some what they thought about when they thought about a girl/woman they really liked, and their answers tended to be body-part oriented, which strikes me as bizarre, so obviously YMMV.


"'You know you're pretty good looking for a child.' That was the last time she smiled." - Black Wire, Attack! Attack! Attack!