h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I wonder what people would think if they looked at my life, not just the segments of it that they see, because everybody gets a different timeslice of McD, and it's not me; it's a bit of me.

Tonight I was two of me. There are more than two of me, but tonight I majored in two. The first one was babysitting my nephew. After bathing him and getting him dressed and playing with him, this me took him downstairs and watched music videos on TV with him until he fell asleep on me. I then took him upstairs and tucked him into bed.

Then the depressive metalhead came downstairs and turned on MTV2. The first me left all the doors open, but the second me turned the TV up for "Iris" and then didn't turn it down again. The second me sat and posted to the Brunching Shuttlecocks UBB and also to H2G2. And read lots and ranted lots, and thought about getting to work re-writing my novel. Which is basically only about 16 pages at the moment, but is the bones of a novel, I'm sure of it.

Two hours later, both mes hear my nephew crying. There's this utter sense of panic as I disconnect suddenly, and race up the stairs, to find him sitting on the floor of his room crying and saying "I want mummy." Whichever of me was there at the time got really heartbroken. He was so small and I didn't expect him to be on the floor next to the door and I nearly trod on him. But I didn't, I turned the light on and hugged him. And then I took him downstairs and flicked the channel from MTV2 to VH1, and he watched Bon Jovi "Living on a Prayer" until he said "want to go to bed." Then I took him upstairs and laid him in his bed, and then sat and stroked his hair as he fell asleep, so he'd know I was there. And only when he'd been snoring for a while did the second me take back over, go downstairs, flick it onto Q.Int.TV and resume my posts.

So what's this thing with me?

I was so scared for him. I know what it's like to be young and alone. I don't think that adults can ever be really lost. We've grown up, matured. There's really nowhere, as long as it has oxygen, where we are really lost. But my earliest and vividest memory is of a time when I was desperately lost in an old building/castle/hotel thing, and I genuinely believe that, because I was only about 4 at the time, that it was the scariest moment of my life. I actually remember the walls seeming to distort, such was the scale of my fear. I don't think that my nephew will have been quite that bad - it was his bedroom. But he is afraid of the dark, or he was anyway a few months back, and so I don't know what was gong through his little two year old head.

I don't understand me any more.