DIMENSIONS

If you are a male you know middle age is starting to sneak up on you when you have to interrupt your sleep almost every night to relieve yourself.  And during the day you have to do so more often.  I think my bladder has shrunken up to about the size of a walnut.  My potty habits are not the subject of this post, but are the causal factor at its root.

Occasionally, when I get up in the middle of the night to…you know…I’ll push the timer button on my clock radio that turns it on for one hour.  When I sit back down on the edge of the bed to go back to sleep (a skill at which I have become quite good – the sleep, that is) I hit the cancel button to return to quiet.  I’m not sure why I bother.  If the Rooskies attacked us with “nookier” weapons, my house might be on fire, but the local radio stations will still be broadcasting their normally scheduled shows.  I don’t know what it would take for a local radio station to interrupt the normal show for a news bulletin.  Anyway, that normal show in the middle of my night on my normal radio station is…well I don’t actually know what it is.  I only ever hear tiny fragments of it.  It seems to be a perfectly fine show.  I know the host’s name, but I won’t give it away.  It rhymes with “Norge Dory.”  The thing about the show is it’s just a little odd.

The first time I ever heard the show sticks in my mind.  I can’t repeat it exactly, but I can give you a very representative facsimile.  “What did you want to talk about?”

“Well, I was traveling in the 20th dimension the other day and I met a being from the 13th dimension.  We had a very nice discussion.”

“About what?”

“Well, he is a traveler going from one dimension to another all the time and he was telling me about another creature he had met in the 9th dimension.”

“Very interesting.”  Yes it was.  It was interesting enough to wake me up, which I did not want to do.  So I hit the button and went back to sleep.  The next day, though, some questions occurred to me.  Is a being from the 13th dimension one-dimensional?  We have three physical dimensions augmented by one of time.  The 13th dimension must be a movie critic’s dream.  “All the characters were very one dimensional.”  And what about the human who was visiting the 20th dimension?  Did he tell the being he met that he was from the 1st through 4th dimensions?  Would that being laugh at him because he needed four dimensions to live in?  Maybe the being would criticize him for needing so many dimensions when all the other sentient beings in the Universe only have one.  You know, the way liberals criticize the US for using so much energy.

Maybe I’m just looking at this all wrong.  Maybe there is an accepted convention out there in the universe.  If a being asks what dimension you are from you just give the first one.  It’s like when you’re in Yellowstone Park and someone asks where you’re from.  You might say, “I’m from Maryland” or “I’m from Baltimore, Maryland,” but you wouldn’t give your street address or zip code.  The radio caller would tell the being from the 13th dimension, “I’m from the 1st dimension.  But, wait a minute.  Isn’t it likely that every being will think that the dimension from which he or she or it comes is the first dimension?  “I’m from the first dimension.”

“Oh, no, I’m from the first dimension.”

“No, I am.  You’re from the 13th dimension.”  Well, it seems obvious that we need an inter-dimensional commission to straighten out this mess.  In the meantime I think Mr. Dory should ask his listeners to stay out of other dimensions until the commission can figure what to do about this.  And what about dimensional overlap?  What if a being from the 9th dimension lives in 5 dimensions of physical space?  Then there is a being from the 12th dimension who lives in three physical dimensions.  Those two beings will have two dimensions of overlap.  Above and beyond the creepiness factor of this there must be legal issues just crying out for attention from an inter-dimensional commission.

Do you see all the terrible things that happen to you when middle age catches up to you?  Your bladder shrinks.  You have to get up in the middle of the night.  You hear an odd radio show.  You think about the implications of the show’s subject.  Aaakk!  No wonder the phrase “crazy old man” is so common today.