Yeti, Nessie, Sasquatch, and Dave

 There's a moment - the precision of which eludes me - when my brain stops trying to remember it belongs to a responsible adult human being and transforms into an organ belonging to an unsupervised improv troupe.

It might be the coffee. It might be the fact it's usually 5am when I start these posts. It might be my duodenum trying to be a triodenum, who knows?

Maybe that's just the hour when logic loosens its tie, reality checks its guns with the hostess, and my imagination starts inviting guests that would be unwelcome in anybody else's noodle.

It's definitely the time when cryptids start making perfect sense and Dave becomes suspiciously involved in everything.

I don't mean that Dave. I mean DAVE. The universal fall guy. The man who wasn't even real but was somehow responsible. The invisible dude we blame when admitting fault would generate paperwork. The need to apologize. Require personal growth. Clean other people's bathrooms. You know, that kind of stuff.

Dave exists in the majority of my posts, not because he's unreliable in real life (again, Dave has no real life) but because he's convenient.

Cryptids, those mythical beasts we're not sure actually exist or are just terrible figments of hyperactive colonoscopy patients coming up from anaesthetic, have the exact same purpose.

Enter the Four Musketeers: Yeti, Nessie, Sasquatch...

Start with Yeti. Reverse alphabetism flying in the face of the rest of this series. Mwaa haa haa.

The Yeti lives where nobody goes on purpose. Snowy, inhospitable mountain ranges where phone batteries die instantly and climbers say, "I made it, Mom!" shortly before disappearing.

For those objects, people, dreams, and dehydrated mashed potato packages that go missing in blizzards, the Yeti is an excellent suspect.

You didn't lose your gloves; Yeti guards them.

Your friends didn't disappear; Yeti borrowed them. Forever.

He's very tall, extremely cold, excessively hairy, and notoriously unavailable for reporters. Much like Dave.

Then there's Nessie. Or, as I like to call her - wishful thinking with a deep Scottish brogue. Nessie has been spotted enough to keep belief alive but not enough to provide proof. 

Nessie represents sunken optimism. You've already committed to a dream-like half belief because you've read the articles, squinted at the shoddy phone pics, and now you can't back out.

That ripple in the water meant something. It was Nessie herself, saying: "You cannae take m' picture, but you can take... m' hagus. 'Cause I dinnae like it much."

Truth. Dave told me.

Now, Sasquatch... there's the king of plausible deniability. Bigfoot is always just out of frame. Always blurry. Always caught by someone who would've gotten a better picture if they weren't busy watering a tree, if you know what I mean.

Maybe Sasquatch is actually blurry. Imagine having 5 billion hairs and they all had split ends, you'd be a fuzzy blob that wanted nothing to do with humanity, too. 

I'm pretty sure Sasquatch is at least in part composed of the hair I've been missing since I was 31. Dave, incidentally, is convinced of the exact same thing.

... and Dave

Cryptids thrive in the places certainty goes to lie down. Dave LIVES there. Did Dave eat the last slice of pizza? Maybe or maybe not.

Dave didn't wake up 25 minutes early, groggily put his fruit of the looms on backwards, wash his teeth, brush his face, leave for work with the wrong shoes on, forget the early morning meeting, drive to the wrong jobsite, tear out three windows in the wrong house, create social anxiety in the workplace, plug up the third toilet from the left before leaving for home, and blame the Ogopogo.

Or did he??

Dave is our modern urban legend. He doesn't leave footprints - just unanswerable questions and chocolate bar wrappers. If something stupid occurs and nobody want to fess up, Dave's name suddenly appears like fog over a lake.

And like Nessie, once Dave's name is muttered, no further explanation is needed. We nod. We understand.

Dave.

Dave and his mysterious peers aren't really monsters. They're coping mechanisms. Ways we explain our oopsies without having to confront the truth that sometimes things happen because we're tired, distracted, or just a wee little bit dumb.

And That's Where the Bee Gees Come In

If cryptids are the unexplained, and Dave is the blame, then the Bee Gees by default become the soundtrack of denial. 

There's something truly inappropriate about "Stayin' Alive" playing while you're attempting to justify a terrible decision. Because it's upbeat. And confident. And causes my hips to not lie.

I've hummed it while retracing my steps and whistled the tune while explaining myself. I'm pretty sure Dave put it on once in mid-argument and simply walked away.

And like cryptids, the Bee Gees refuse to leave the collective consciousness. People say they're done with the boys. They're over. Disco is dead. Yet, there they are, falsetto ringing, coming through grocery store speakers and making you Travolta in the dairy section. Which sounds a whole lot weirder than I anticipated.

Cryptids do the same thing. Dave does it daily. The Bee Gees help us dance to the rhythm of life, one decade at a time.

The older I get, the more I realize that we blame the unknown for our foolishness because they're gentler than we are. We tend to be too hard on ourselves if left unchecked. 

So we've mixed our monsters together and created a big, hairy, deep water-dwelling creature that accepts the blame and doesn't care that we named it Dave.

Because Dave never argues. That's his gift. Absorbing blame like Nessie absorbs sonar pings. Even if Dave ever truly disappeared, we'd find a way to blame him for the disappearance. "Dave must have moved. Or, he witnessed his own murder and is now in the witness protection program until he can testify against and for himself simultaneously."

Classic Dave.

I Don't Actually Believe in Monsters

I believe in tired brains, exhausted emotions, and the need for a soft landing when we mess up. Soft muppet monster Dave is that landing. And the Bee Gees are there to make sure our embarrassment comes with a surprisingly catchy tune.

Somewhere out there, someone is reading this and nodding along, because they know a Dave. Maybe they are a Dave. That's okay.

Every legend needs a witness. Every mistake needs a backstory, and soundtrack. And every over stimulated, quirky, slightly weird imagination needs at least four musketeers standing by, ready to take one for the team.

None of this was my fault by the way.

Dave said so.