Emma Philbrook: STUDENT LIFE

As graduation draws near, the term “future” gets bandied about more and more, and I increasingly find myself wondering what life will hold for me a couple decades down the road. The following scenario, while highly improbable, is ideal:

Emma is a high-powered attorney and bestselling author who lives in a nice-but-still-easily-cleanable home in the suburbs of a larger city. She owns three corgis – Scout, Mimi, and Benedict – and is married to a gentle man with a sparkling intellect and a National Geographic subscription. They spend their free time traveling the world, quashing mathematical paradoxes, sock-skating on the ridiculously large parquet floor of their otherwise unused recreation room, and prank-calling the younger siblings who had the audacity to poke fun at their nerdiness all those years ago.

The following is a more realistic version of the above:

Emma is a paralegal who self-published a dorky science fiction story in college. She lives in an apartment somewhere near the law firm where she works. She owns three potted orchids – Scout, Mimi, and Benedict – which she named after the three corgis that she’s always wanted to own but can’t, per her lease. After a lifetime of loneliness, she is starting to date a guy she met on the internet. He says he went to “Hervurd” and works for a Seattle-based technology company called Macrosoff. Emma is still in the process of running a background check, but so far the results don’t look good. In the meantime, she amuses herself by doing Sudoku and writing surrealistic poetry.

Some lucky people have dreams that tell them the future. I hope I’m not one of those, because here are my post-high-school plans according to a few of my more recent trips to the Land of Nod:

Emma is a Cold War-era spy whose specialty is pretending to be carrying a doomsday weapon. On one of her more recent missions, she managed to fool an entire roomful of Communists and Nazis into buying this one. The mission was going very well – heck, there was even a laugh track in the background – when the building was raided by those beige droids from the newer Star Wars movies. She managed to escape and resume a new identity as a competitive flamenco dancer. By day, she rocks her castanets and a seriously frilly pink dress. By night, she searches for the man who was supposed to be her last contact. (Charlie Foxtrot, if you’re reading this, the fish have bit. Repeat: the fish have bit. Oh, and also watch out for futuristic spacecraft. And maybe see if HQ can come up with a catchy codename for “futuristic spacecraft”. Thanks!)

And finally, here’s my future according to a quiz on the Internet:

Emma lives on her own in an apartment. She becomes a stylist to the stars and travels the world. Eventually, she will marry a funny and outgoing doctor and have a baby boy. They will all end up living in an amazing home.

Yeah, right. Anybody who has ever seen me in person knows that the “stylist to the stars” bit isn’t gonna work out. Between the awful hours that doctors keep and the awful hours that stylists keep, the only reason that this home of ours will look amazing is that we’re never around to mess it up.

So pass me those castanets and power up my laser blaster – I’m opting for the interesting future.