In which we play ghost tag

Collaborative

In which we play ghost tag

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Setup: A room full of TVs with the lights off. They are white static, but occaionally flash images. The narrator instructs the listeners to change the chanels with a remote. We see clips of “Knight Ridder” and “Mission Impossible.” The audience is asked to put on disguises. And actor taps the shoulder of the audience member, but upon seeing the disguise shakes his head sadly and moves on.

Contents:

I guess lots of kids play with imaginary friends. I don’t remember ever doing it. I’m sure it wasn’t from lack of imagination. I just spent my time with ghosts. I still do. There are some here now.

Ghosts make excellent playmates. Sometimes they are tempted to cheat at hide and seak. Tag is really the best game to play with ghosts. We liked freeze tag the best, but the ghosts would always name shows that had been off the air for years. And they hadn’t heard of the shows I watched – because they had died. We got in an argument so bad one day, that we could never play again. Bill- that’s what he claimed to be his name, although I found it vauge and suspicious- Bill insisted that Knight Ridder was a ridiculous premise, and nothing even remotely similar to that could ever occur in any imagined future of this world.

I called him narrow-minded.

He said that ghosts like shows where people wear disguises. Bill said he was a huge fan of mission impossible. I asked him if he was talking about the Tom Cruise movies, but he hadn’t seen them – because he died. He had meant the TV show. When I told him I didn’t realize it was a TV show first, he got really offended and didn’t talk to me for a whole month.

One day for his birthday I decided to surprise him for his birthday and I wore fake mustache and glasses. He didn’t recognize me. He never did again.