Diversionary Tactics

I can’t remember what had upset her, just that I sat awkwardly. Samantha tried talking to her, making things worse instead of better. I thrive on a life of limited confrontation, avoiding sad people and making inappropriate comments at serious times. I try to diffuse situations I feel inept at dealing with, and I felt unqualified to help someone that I considered a friend, but had only really gotten to know in the past few weeks. Heather looks like she is about to cry, and I need to tune out.

I turn on the TV; I have always associated hotels with TV watching. I never watch it at home, yet I can’t stand to be in a hotel room with the TV off. Channel surfing reveals nothing in English, only French, and both Heather and Sam are looking at me, annoyed by my apathy. I settle on the cartoon station and hit mute.

“Bwahaha I am the evil carrot monster!”

They stop talking and glare. “What are you doing?” Sam asks.

“You’ve never played this game?” Heather has indeed started to cry, and if I want this to work, instead of simply make me look unhinged, I need to act quickly. “I do this all the time with the Spanish Channel, you hit mute and dub it yourself.” A robot character has started to talk “Oh look at me, I am so shiny I will defeat you… when the sun reflects off my glistening chest!”

Heather chokes out a laugh, and I pause, unsure if I should continue, or if I’m making things worse. The villainous carrot is back in the scene, and appears to be kicking ass.

Part of the fun of dubbing is that you have to think on the fly. I don’t know what this show is; subsequently I’ve never seen this episode. I don’t know what’s coming next. I try to think on my feet, covering line after line, hoping to have a semblance of a plot, even if that plot is absurd. I stop again.

“Why did you stop?” Heather’s face is still blotchy, but she seems to have stopped crying.

“I need some time to think.”

“Keep going! You’re hysterical!” Heather smiles for the first time all day, and Sam looks relieved that the situation didn’t evolve into a full-blown meltdown. The episode has ended. The robot and his friends seem to have saved the world from sinister carrots. Another episode of the same show starts and they both beg me to keep going. I keep it up for another half an hour, being as ridiculous as possible, listening to my two roommates-for-the-night laugh as I adapted what my parents and I usually saved for telenovela night to fit a French cartoon. My diversion worked, and as the Bastille Day fireworks started the three of us killed the lights, and the TV, and stood on my twin bed by the window, trying to get a good look.