Hello, Welcome. I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. Musing Interruptus is a podcast for sharing thoughts and stories and enjoying idiomatic phrases. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode; click on continue reading to open a Google Doc with the complete transcription. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. The background music is called Palms Down by Blue Dot.
Today, Cassandra’s Conundrum
Let’s not skirt this topic; impatience will get you to the worst places fast. Such is the case of Casandra, who found herself stuck in a box of cereal. It wasn’t even the yummy kind, with chocolate and marshmallows. It was shredded wheat, a cereal that seemed to be made of the same box it came in. In a pinch, you could add milk to the box and get at least another bowl out of the ordeal. You might call it getting the best bang for your buck. I think Casandra must have thrown a fit when she realized she was stuck in a cereal box. But that is what happens when you open a box too fast. You see, that morning, she was extra hungry on account of a very energetic dream. She was in hot pursuit of a lion and not the other way around, which would probably be even more stressful. In her dream, she was a lion keeper at a zoo. The lion escaped when she was feeding him. He was super strong and could jump with great precision. She could only run and not fast enough. She knew if the lion escaped, it would be her fault, and the townspeople would be in danger. The worst part of it, she was running barefoot, and she had only one dart in her tranquilizer gun. An interesting fact about Casandra is that she knew things about shooting a weapon, even though in her waking life, she had never had a weapon in her hands. For instance, you can’t drive and shoot at the same time. This was only done in movies and was unrealistic, as the shooter's accuracy would be severely diminished. She was very observant when it came to these types of things, especially in case she needed that knowledge in some unforeseeable future. Well, the time came, and it was in a dream. Some dreams are lucid, and others are not. If it were a lucid dream, she could take control and imagine the lion is back in its cage or maybe even jump back in time and avoid the whole situation; she could also just make it someone else's problem. But it was not a lucid dream; she would never shirk her responsibilities. She was running barefoot after a very powerful jumping lion, with a tranquilizer gun in her right hand her index finger on the trigger. She knew this was a mistake, one false move, and it would surely go off. But she couldn’t take her finger off of the trigger. If she pulled the trigger ahead of time, she would miss her opportunity to sedate the jumping lion, and who knows what would happen next? As I mentioned, it was not a lucid dream. Cassandra ran through a forest, a desert, and then a city in ruins. Where was this cat going? Why wasn’t he tired yet, and why wasn’t she being chased by the lion? Why was she the predator? All questions she would ask herself once awake. When Casandra was finally about to catch up to the lion, she pointed the tranquilizer gun, loaded with a dart, and squeezed the trigger... continue reading
