The man was just starting to turn into a merman, when the phone rang.
I had been channel surfing and had stopped on what was a teenage series about mermaids when the facetime call came in. I left the television on, volume turned down.
My daughter calls me almost daily, usually while driving to work. It worries me actually, that we facetime while she is driving. Whenever she seems to see me, I ask her to watch the road and she tells me she is stopped at traffic lights.
But this time, I was not distracted by the idea that my daughter is chatting with her mother while zooming along a Berlin autobahn. I was distracted by the potential merman.
He had accidently fallen into a magical circle of mermaids, doing some sort of magical rite at a magical hour in a magical mermaid cavern of water, sparkling with magical light. Next day, he couldn’t show the entry to his friends because it was sealed up. Something was going to happen.
I mean, he may not have been turning to a merman, but the mermaids were worried, and I could feel it in my non-mermaid waters, so to speak. I had to know for sure. And so, I half listened to my daughter with my left ear and the low volume of the television with my right. At times, I had to interrupt her conversation with observations and predictions about the potential merman. These interruptions became woven into a conversation about her holidays (she has a lot) and visits to the doctor (sadly, she has lots of these too).
It was a three-way conversation of sorts and a little bit on the ecclectic side.
“If I could film this, I would put it on youtube. I could make a fortune,” she said.
It was then that I reallised that mermen had been woven into her forthcoming weekend in Majorca (I mean, it was a perfect fit) and may have also been responsible for her recent week off work with illness. These mermen have a lot to answer for.
In her frustration, my daughter asked me to change television stations. There was a vampire movie on the next station. Realising the direness of the next conversation, my daughter said she would chat again tomorrow. I hope she was stopped at a traffic light when she gave me that eye roll.
