Have you ever had something really significant happen in your life and it changes everything? Imagine devoting years to something, giving it your heart and soul, and then suddenly it’s ripped away from you.
Something like this can be devastating. I know.
You know what I am talking about, right?
You know what happened to me a few years ago, right?
Right. Of course you know.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ended of course. It was not canceled. God! The cast and crew simply decided that after seven years they were done and wanted to move on. Do not use the words Buffy and cancelled in the same sentence. God!
Anyway, since that horrible evening when Buffy stood over the gaping crater that had been Sunnydale, smiling that weird smile, my life has become a meaningless black hole. Much like that crater.....
Sad. Sad but true.
But things have started to change. Its seems like once a month there is some story on NPR about how Buffy is being picked up at some major university as it’s own course of study, or how reporters in Iraq face each horrible day by asking themselves “What Would Buffy Do?”
Recently a comic book version of season eight came out. The show ended after season seven, so the comic book picks up right up where the TV series left off. It took me several issues to get into the groove of this new Buffy, but it's working for me now.
So now, after years, I have been able to start watching the DVD’s again. It’s not that I never looked at a single episode after the show ended. No, every once in a while I would pop in a disk to watch Buffy kill Angel. That is one of the finest moments of television ever done. And of course, Hush, oh and the Musical, and of course anything with Glory in it. Glory was the best Big Bad ever and my own personal role model. Oh and Riley’s nipples. Oh and of course Evil Willow. OK, OK, I was watching the DVD’s all along. All but season seven. It was just too much to watch the final season again.
But now, finally, the time seemed right. Over the course of the last couple of weeks Mark and I have made it through all but the last couple episodes. I am thinking about Buffy a lot. In fact I am at work right now sitting at my desk listening to the soundtrack to Buffy the Musical on my iPod. I am coughing today. Coughing and coughing. I don't think I am sick. I am just a cougher.
I was listening to the song Under Your Spell, the lovely joyous song where Tara and Willow frolic around in their strange medieval looking dresses in a park. God I miss Tara. The episode we watched last night is the one where Faith shows up and everyone turns on Buffy. I was so mad I was shaking. This never would have happened if Tara was still alive.
Anyway, I have my iPod turned up loud and I can tell it's bugging Cletus. Cletus is the new business lead who sits on the other side of the wall from me. His name is not really Cletus but I call him that because he reminds me of the Cletus character from The Simpsons:
Some folk'll never lose a toe
But then again some folk'll
like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel.
Cletus put up a big piece of wood to block his view of me on his first day. Nothing like building a wall between the business and IT on your first day. On his side of the wall he has a picture of a giant leprechaun right where my head would be. I am not sure how to take this.
Anyway, I am sitting listening to the song and coughing and coughing. Tara is singing "You make me complete. You make me come-plete. You make me come…." Right when Tara moans that final "come" I laugh, cough really hard and hock this giant luggy right in Cletus’s general direction. It slams into his wooden wall with a loud splat.
I look over horrified, cough some more, then burst out laughing. I am coughing and laughing and not getting enough air so I start choking and crying too. All 10 of the people in my group stop what they are doing and look over at me. All but the people from India who sit right by me. They are all staring intently at their keyboards and they are laughing but trying not to show it. I know they saw the whole thing.
I can't stop laughing, I can't stop coughing, and I cannot breathe. The luggy is there, not dripping, not moving. It’s just stuck there for all to see. I can't get up to clean it or Cletus will realize what I have done. Instead I ask myself, what else, “What Buffy would do?”
She would run.
I head to the bathroom to hide. I have to walk by my manager's office on the way to the bathroom and she asks me why I am making so much noise. Between laughs and chokes I tell her what happened and she starts laughing too. Really loud. Then I hear the Indians 30 feet away. They are finally letting loose too.
I go back to my desk and after a bit Cletus gets up to leave and I try to clean off the wall. It seems to have petrified. The Indians are all still looking down at their keyboards and laughing. One of them, Vidhya, sends me and email that says, “Guess it was good that he put up that wall after all.”
Guess so.
On a side note, according to the Buffy Wiki, http://buffy.wikia.com, Fyarl demons have the ability of shooting paralyzing mucus from their noses. After drying, this substance becomes extremely hard and durable.
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