There are two types of adventures: real adventures and mind adventures. Mind adventures take place almost exclusively in my head and are due to something called an overactive imagination. I'm still trying to decide if what happened between the hours of 6 PM last night and 7 AM this morning was a mind adventure or a real adventure. It was probably both, but I was supposedly awake the entire time, so it feels real.
IMAGINATION
It all centers around a class I'm taking this semester. It's technically called "Basic Media Production" (all us film majors call it 185), and it's almost exactly what it sounds like. We learn a little bit of everything and we do a whole lotta bit of work. This is one of those classes that you hear a lot about how hard it is...only this one lives up to the expectations. It is HARD. It's also one of the best classes I've ever had. I've learned so much and made good friends and eaten so much Nutella because of this class. I love it, which I guess is why I'm a film major.
The final for this class was a final binder and DVD including our final fiction film. It was all due at 7 AM this morning. I had finished editing the fiction film and assembling the binder, so all I had to do was burn the DVD. I started that at 6 PM last night. Having burned several DVDs before, I figured it'd be smooth sailing and I'd be in bed before 11. This was not the case.
Fast-forward 9 hours. It was 3:30 AM and my DVD was still not burned. I tried every possible thing I could think of. I got help from my Dad, my friends Cory and Payden, and my TA, Lane (who is the greatest TA of all time, by the way). Though all their suggestions were great, nothing was working.
If you were to see inside my
brain at this point last night, this
is what you would see:
(It is blackness interrupted
by a single white line.
Interpret it how you will.)
I found myself trying the same thing over and over and praying that it would burn. Praying. Boy, was I praying. My Mother, who had heard about my troubles from my Dad, was also praying. Apparently she was worried about me (and my grade, and my future) and couldn't sleep.
At 3:45 AM I decided that I would click "burn" one more time, go to sleep, wake up in the morning, and turn in whatever it was I had to turn in. In slow motion (partly for dramatic effect and partly due to lack of sleep), I clicked the button one last time. All of a sudden, the progress bar jumped to 99% and the next thing I know I'm holding a working DVD in my hands. If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is. I don't know what I did to deserve it, really.
I was so excited, happy and grateful, I couldn't fall asleep for another 30 minutes.
After two hours of sleep, I woke up, bundled up (it was butt cold outside), and made my way to class. It was dark and I thought I was the only person outside.
(This is where I need to explain something and why it's been on my mind lately. In my 185 class, there's been this recurring thing throughout the semester about a well-dressed southern gentlemen who represents the devil. Several of my classmates' fiction films and scripts featured a character like it.)
So I was walking to school alone in the dark and I look ahead of me and the person I see (NO LIE) is a perfect mix between this:
And this:
Naturally, I assumed this person was the devil. To be honest, I'm still not entirely convinced he wasn't. I was just glad that he was walking in front of me, so that I could keep an eye on him. I was absolutely sure that at any moment this man would turn around, stare me down, and demand I trade my soul for a jar of pickles. I could only imagine his low, Southern-drawl of a voice saying something like, "Pardon me, miss," and it made me shiver. The only thing that got me through this incredibly long walk to class was the memory of the miracle that had happened only hours earlier.
I guess you could say I got to see all sides of life this morning. The good, the bad, and the ugly (me....it was a loooooong night that didn't include a shower).
So did this adventure take place in my mind? Maybe. Is that going to stop me from remembering it as real? Absolutely not.
