Life’s Plan B

So Life’s Plan A is fine, right? Job and bills and hobbies and celebrity biographies on the weekends. But on days like today, one has to ask…what about Plan B?

“Floating Luncheon,” Hamilton Wright, 1939.

I have some ideas. Only one of which is eating pasta on a floaty.

Step 1: Pack up everything that will fit in my car.

Not everything will fit, so we have to prioritize. Bring the entire comfy pants collection and all the bottles of expired vitamin gummies, and then once that half of the car is full, fill the rest up with kitchen magnets and canvas tote bags.

Step 2: Set up mysterious circumstances under which to disappear.

Any self-respecting student-loan-haver needs to figure out how to escape her situation, especially these days when the Secretary of Education is taking away the onus of accountability from those poor persecuted debt collectors! Because she’s never had a student loans or also any idea what she’s doing! Great!

There area couple different ways to disappear under mysterious circumstances and have the student loan men never ever ever find you.

• Murder Mystery! Get 17 bottles of ketchup, and spray 16 of them on the floor of your apartment yelling, “oh no! No, thank you, Murderer! I want no part in this!” so your neighbors will start to wonder. Save the 17th bottle for all the cheeseburgers you eat when you’re on the run. If you’re thinking, “Meredith, I don’t think that’s how crime scenes look,” I’m pretty sure I’m right. I’ve seen Dexter.
• MAGIC! Carry around a bag of flour. Whenever you’re ready to disappear, throw the bag on the ground, and in the ensuing cloud, run away yelling, “GOODBYE FOREVER!” When the people around you stop coughing, you’ll be gone. They have no other choice but to believe that you are a magic person and are gone forever.
• Hammer of Justice and also just a regular hammer Smash your cell phone with a hammer. With all my knowledge of surveillance coming from The Truman Show, I’m calling it…no one will be able to find you, and because you no longer have Google Maps on your phone, you also won’t be able to find anyone else!

You guys hiring? (“Girls Deliver Ice,” International Film Service, 1918, National Archives.)

Step 3: Pursue one of the following under the alias Louisa McRealname

• Start a cheese-delivery company. Like Uber, but for cheese
• Have someone realize I’m very charming, and pay to hear my opinions
• Start a candle-making company with a basset hound named Gloria. Gloria will have to do most of the candle-making as I know nothing about candle-making.
• Make colorful jumpsuits for whimsical mechanics
• Become a whimsical mechanic
• Ask very very nicely for people to pay for my burritos and celebrity biographies. Someone has got to appreciate manners out there.
• Form a musical group with my family called the Dulcimer Darlings. Everyone plays the dulcimer, but considering I don’t know how to play the dulcimer and am a founding member of the Dulcimer Darlings, I run around the stage excitedly pointing to my family members who will be playing dulcimers
• Start a food truck where our specialty is peanut butter banana toast. And by a food truck, I mean my car. #AcuraMDXcellenttoast #sureamgladIboughtthistoast The marketing writes itself.
• Become a model, but only in those “everyone is beautiful” Dove ads where people would feel bad saying anything mean about me and only pay me compliments
• Perform all the parts in the Hanson classic “Minute Without You” on repeat on the New York subway. I know 47% of the words, but I’m pretty sure people like listening to mumble-singing that means well.

But like I said, Plan A is fine. I don’t think whimsical mechanics get medical.