Rancho Tarzanadu: "Miss Linda Turns into a Doll"

     Miss Linda was turned into a doll.

     She was not exactly certain how it happened, but she’d been mulling it over quite a bit, as you might imagine.

     She’d had another night of extremely fitful dreams (some would call them nightmares), in which she was trying to navigate her way through crowded college campuses, trudging her way up lengthy winding stairwells, and running perennially late for class.

     She arrived at one class later than all the other students, and was ushered into what looked like a restaurant (it had been nearly a year since she’d been to an actual restaurant), and was seated at a small, child-like table with a green and white checkered tablecloth. There was a bottle of red wine on the table – the kind that comes in that little basket-type thing, and there was also various fancy cheeses and hearty bread. Just as she came to the realization that she had been out-and-about without a mask on, at crowded college campuses, enclosed winding stairwells, and now here at a restaurant (!), she woke with a start at 4:30 AM, to the stark discovery that she was now…a doll.

     Her mother had died three days after Thanksgiving (nine weeks ago), and Miss Linda let the waterworks flow for a solid two weeks after that, then began functioning in a sort of melancholic daze (some would call this depression). She had been isolated at Rancho Tarzanadu for almost a full year due to the pandemic, and as beautiful a place as it was for a person to be isolated…it was still isolation. She had busied and distracted herself for weeks with tying up loose ends (some ends inevitably slipped through the cracks) from her sweet mother’s death, and now felt like a lonely orphan. One of Miss Linda’s neighbors actually said to her: “You’re an orphan now!” As old as Miss Linda was, she did not disagree with her; she was an orphan now.

     Miss Linda’s theory was that all of these things combined had turned her into a doll. Which felt strangely…natural, considering the circumstances.

     Now she had to figure out how to turn herself back into a human.

     Maybe she’d wait a little while longer before rushing to figure things out.

     Maybe being a doll might actually be better?

     She definitely had plenty to think about.

     As long as she could still fill out her unemployment forms online, it might not be so bad to just stay this way for a while.

     She had a paper due the next day comparing the Ancient Greeks to modern-day Polyamorists…getting that done could be tricky. Typing it up would definitely take longer than usual.

     There were lots of things to figure out…lots and lots of various things, but she decided to go with the flow for now…what else could she do, really?

 

(Photo credit: self-portrait by Miss Linda, on her first day as a doll.)