Attention to Detail

I dreamt up a clever joke yesterday. I dreamt it right up.

I was asleep in the evening, as part of my revolutionary approach to sleep scheduling, and I came up with what I thought would be a nice tweet. I only had the opening idea. It was something like:

A murmurer is only one letter away from a murderer. 

I thought of following it up with something like:

A prison pen pal programme would be beneficial to them both.

You see? The word "murmurer" is only one letter away from the word "murderer", but also the murmuring person could write a letter (the other kind of letter) to a murder in prison. There's a double meaning there.

I woke up, glad to have had a profitable period of unconsciousness. I tried to work out a snappy way of saying it. Perhaps the murmurer would prefer written communication because his verbal inarticulacy wouldn't be an issue. What would the murderer get out of it? Just some kind of companionship?

I thought about it for some time: honing, crafting, editing. I got close to posting it, and then I realised something.

A murmurer isn't only one letter away from a murderer.

A murmurer is only one letter away from a murdurer.

A murmurer is two letters away from a murderer.

I'd spent so much time patting myself on the back about transposing the 'm' into 'd', I had forgotten that the second 'u' would need to become an 'e'.

The whole thing fell apart, like a house of sand cards.

For a while, I tried to salvage it.

A murmurer is only two letters away from a murderer. If... perhaps one was sent to the warden to enquire about any lonely prisoners? And then the second letter could go to the murderer herself or something?

(People tend to assume murderers are men, but this is only true in a vast majority of cases. End sexism now. Accuse a female friend of murder.)

That's not really snappy enough, is it? It's a lost cause of a joke.

I should start being a bit more rigorous when looking at dream jokes. Dreams are often even less coherent than the waking me.

***

I bought a coat yesterday, before my evening nap (I find it difficult to shop in my sleep, because I keep forgetting my wallet).

It was the most brutally efficient shopping trip ever. It was a surgical strike of a purchase.

I went into a well-known high street clothing store, saw a coat I quite liked, tried it on quickly, and bought it. I didn't look around, I didn't go to any other shops, I didn't have to wait in line for ages.

[At this point in the anecdote, Paul realises that him buying a coat without difficulty is not impressive or even interesting to anyone. There has been a paucity of incident thus far. Some embellishment is required.]

But as I was leaving the shop, the alarm went off. A bored looking security guard came up to me and asked what was in my bag. I was polite. Too polite. I must have looked like I had something to hide.

I showed him the coat, and the receipt, and he (clearly uninterested) was about to let me go. But then he spotted something else in my bag. It was a gaudy picture frame, with disgusting fake diamonds round the edge. It had come from the 'Home' section of that very store. It wasn't listed on my receipt.

"Have you paid for this, sir?" he asked, reluctantly switching from comatose to Columbo.

I hadn't paid for it. I had never seen it before.

"I've never seen that before," I said. "I wasn't even in that section of the shop. I just wanted a coat."

"If you'd like to come with me sir," he said. He put his hand in the small of my back, guiding me back into the store.

At this point, instinct took over. I grabbed his wrist with my right hand and spun around, twisting his arm. I kicked him twice in the face, and then brought my foot above his head and sent an axe kick crashing down on the back of his neck.

He collapsed, motionless. A member of staff shouted "Oh my God!" and ran towards a phone. I didn't have time to consider my options. In one quick motion, I removed a key card from the unconscious guard's belt and threw it at the other staff member. It struck her and embedded itself right below the chin. A fountain of blood sprayed all over the reduced children's wear.

An elderly couple on the escalator looked on in horror. I considered pushing them down. You know - for fun.

But instead, I took my new coat out of my bag and put it on, picked up my lovely new picture frame, and ran off into the cold of the evening.

I couldn't feel the cold. It was a very warm coat. I vowed then and there to take a photo of myself wearing the coat, and to display it in the frame. As a memento.

I hopped on the bus and headed home, destined to dream of a murmurer. And things similar to that.

***

[Paul's embellishment was like something out of a bad novel. He considers deleting it. But... the coat anecdote definitely needed something. He's sure of THAT. A couple of interjections in the third-person would make everything OK. He thinks.]