A Pep Talk For Better Ratings

I swear this happened: It was a Wednesday and I was having a perfectly pleasant stroll in the park. I went and looked at the ducks for a bit, as you do, then I sat on a bench and sniffed the Autumn air.

It smelled like it usually smells. Why wouldn’t it?

A leaf landed on the bench near me and as I turned to look at its colours, an old lady appeared and sat on it with a crunch.

She looked at me expectantly, quivering, blinking beneath her giant bifocals, so I tried to distract her by pointing at the ducks, in case she hadn’t noticed them.

I asked her if she thought duck’s quacks echoed, because I heard this was something people weren’t sure about. Then I talked to her about how darker the nights were getting. She just sat quivering, squinting at me and shaking her head. I made a pretty astute observation about the weather and rounded it off by saying: “Yes, Autumn has come on early this year, hasn’t it?”

But to this, the old lady suddenly stopped trembling, sighed, and made a “cut” motion at her neck in the direction of a tree. She took off her glasses and wig to reveal a head of straight black hair.

“Come on,” she said, with a masculine voice that sounded oddly familiar. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sorry?” I said.

“What is this shit? What are you doing? Why are you so damn boring?”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t real, okay? I didn’t want to have to break this to you, but we’re at our wit’s end here.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Have you ever seen that movie The Truman Show?” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s great.”

“Right,” the old lady said. “That’s what this is, okay. All of this is staged for the viewing pleasure of the universe. You are Truman. I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out yourself, honestly. It was pretty obvious.”

“Huh,” I said. I’d long suspected the world revolved around me, so it made sense. But then I stopped to think about the implications.

All the embarrassing things I’d done in my assumed privacy. All those poops with the door open. All that dancing like no one was watching. All those afternoons wasted to challenging wanks over non-descript household items. Just this morning I spent 40 minutes tugging away while staring at a lamp.

“So everyone saw…”

“Yes, everyone saw,” the old woman said.

“Huh. So none of this is real?”

“It depends what you mean by real.”

“Well, are those ducks real?”

“No.”

“Are you real?” I reached out to touch the old lady’s face but she parried my hand away with expert reflexes. “So people are interested in watching me?”

“That’s the problem,” the old lady said, taking off a rubber mask to show she was, in fact, a middle aged man, with rugged good looks and a scruffy beard. “They were interested, but the last five or six seasons have just tanked in the ratings.”

“Autumn is a quieter time.”

“No, I mean seasons on TV you idiot.”

“I see. Wait, you look familiar...”

“Obviously the whole point of this show is to keep you out of the loop, to keep the experience genuine, but at this rate we’ll be cancelled by the end of the year, so we need to spice things up.”

“…spice things up?”

“Be more entertaining. We’re cut to commercials right now, so I’m thinking we can quickly spitball some ideas. Our writing team are fresh out of them. You’re just so damn boring. Everything they suggest flops. You need to up your game.”

“Up it how?”

“Do something interesting every once in a while. My God man, you’re 32 and you’re out in the middle of the day feeding ducks. Who does that? What are you doing with your life? Why aren’t you out getting laid, taking drugs, joining cults and getting in to fistfights?”

“Is that what 32 year olds should be doing?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what our competition is doing. The daytime soaps are killing us.”

I thought for a moment, considered this alternative life, considered this man I was talking to. “There’s still time for all those things,” I said.

“Maybe, but it’s quickly running out,” the man sighed. “If you don’t turn it around soon you’ll be out of a job. Maybe we all will.”

“I’m already out of a job, I got sacked last- …wait, that was staged to try and boost ratings, wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was.”

“And my friends. They aren’t really my friends?”

“Nope.”

“And Stacey leaving me. That must have been staged too? That was another attempt to spice things up, right?”

“Actually no, that bit was real. The actress hated your cuts.”

“Huh,” I said, then it hit me. “Hey, I do know you! You’re that actor from the movie Point Break.”

Keanu sighed. “Yes, but that wasn’t a real movie.”

“Oh, of course. Hey, tell me: why did you kick that dog in the chase scene? That didn’t make sense.”

“All right, forget it,” Keanu said, putting his rubber mask and wig back on. “We’re back on the air in about 10 seconds. Just… do something interesting.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno,” he said, “start a fight or something! Get mad!”

“I was actually pretty mad when you kicked that dog in Point Break.”

“Good, that’s real emotion. Use that. Do something about it!”

I saw a duck’s mouth open and the words “action” echoed through the park. Keanu, now transformed back to a quivering old lady, was looking at me expectantly again, just like before.

So I socked him in the sniffer and carried on feeding the ducks.

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