I hate Jimmy Fallon.

When I was about eight years old, my brother, our neighbors, and I started a small lemonade stand in our front yard. I feel like having a lemonade stand is a quintessential American childhood experience, and we were having a pretty good time. Only 25 cents a cup (this was pre-inflation) and no frills. You got a plastic cup, I poured in the powdered lemonade from the pitcher, and we all went on our way. A few hours in, a black BMW sedan pulled up across the street from us. I thought it was just another customer, and got ready to put on my cute eight-year-old customer service smile. From the title of this blog post, I bet you know who got out. To reiterate, I was eight when this happened, so there is no way I could have known he was the Jimmy Fallon. He asked me for a cup of lemonade, and poured one for him like I had done for every other customer. I held my hand out as I started to open the cash box, but I didn’t feel the cool thud of a quarter on my hand. I looked up, and he was staring at me like I was the 40 year old and he was the 8 year old.

I pointed at the sign and mentioned the price, but he didn’t move. He asked me if I knew who he was. I said no, being the daughter of Indian immigrant parents living in the suburbs of Chicago. I don’t know why he was so butthurt by that, but next thing I knew, he picked up our entire gallon of lemonade and dumped it on my head, followed by some…choice words. I, of course, started crying, and my brother and our neighbors were just standing there, dumbfounded.

So, that was a lie. I’m sorry if I just shattered your world, but I also don’t want to get sued for libel because of my AP Lit blog post. Whenever I have trouble falling asleep, I like to play a little game with myself. It doesn’t have a name, but it mainly entails coming up with the most bizarre things that Jimmy Fallon could have done to me. I have literally no idea why I do this, but I’ve found out that it is also a really great way to pass time in class. The reason I chose Jimmy Fallon is because the concept of “Jimmy Fallon” is a complete enigma to me. How a man can have so much life on screen yet no light in his eyes is a mystery. Anyways, I thought I would share some of the scenarios I thought of (also because I am drained for blog post ideas).

I am a proud graduate of Ceramics 1, but that class literally drained me (and my gas tank) because of all the time I spent on ceramics after school. The main cause of this was because as we were working on our vases, my project suffered catastrophic injuries, not once, but three times, leading me to have to fix what started looking like the Colosseum. My theory is that every night, Jimmy Fallon would break into the school and personally punch my vase out of spite. Why, I don’t know, but it was probably because I mildly dented his ego because I didn’t recognize him when I was EIGHT. Eventually, I put enough hours into my vase that even Jimmy Fallon recognized my hard work and had to end his poltergeisting. Apparently though, he still wasn’t done with me. A week later, I was making a whistle, and I came in during lunch to work. For background, I had ceramics 4th period and lunch 6th, so there was only a 50 minute timeframe when Jimmy Fallon could have gotten into the ceramics room and stuck his thumb in my whistle. I’m not even exaggerating, there was a perfect thumb print in my whistle when I came in to work. The only catch is that there is a ceramics class 5th period, so he couldn’t have just waltzed in and committed attempted murder against my piece. Maybe that’s an overreaction, but considering what I suspect he did to my vase, I see no problems with hyperbole. Back to my theory. I think Jimmy Fallon has superpowers. At the very least, he can teleport and turn invisible because that’s the only way he could have carried this heist out. He probably turned invisible, teleported into the ceramics room, stuck his thumb in my whistle, and left. Fortunately, the whistle was still completely usable, thanks to the aura of benevolent power Ms. Rehs holds.

I think our mind holds a lot of control over our bodies. Not just in a biological sense, but in the sense that leaning into sickness makes you feel more sick or that thinking about your stomach ache will make it worse. In my case, I think it made me short. You can ask anyone who knew me up till about sixth grade, and they will tell you that I was the tallest person in class. Me and my orange Kroehler YMCA Porpoise swim team sweatshirt were always in the back row for class pictures, and all my aunts and uncles thought I’d reach six feet one day. Oh, how they were wrong. In reality, it’s definitely the fact that the average height for Indian women is just above 5 feet, but I, of course, have to overthink it and insert Jimmy Fallon into the picture. I used have pretty bad nightmares when I was younger, and I believe that the moment they ended was the moment I stopped growing. My explanation of this definitely-inaccurate relationship is that during the time I had nightmares, Jimmy Fallon was sneaking into my room every night and sticking coins under my bed posts. This would make my bed height rise by an imperceptible amount every day, until one day I realize that my legs don’t hit the floor – hence, to my young, impressionable mind, the only explanation is that I shrunk. Why did this coincide with my nightmares, you ask? I mean, look at him. Imagine you wake up in the middle of the night to get water, and THIS is the face staring back at you.

Unforgettable in the worst way possible. Once I got the idea in my head that I shrunk, my brain subconsciously stopped sending growth hormones (I doubt this is actually how it works) to my body, so I stopped growing. Maybe my extensive imagination is making up for my lack of vertical altitude.

I know these seem fantastical at best, disturbingly obsessive at worst, but in a world of 8 billion people, there’s bound to be someone who Jimmy Fallon actively psychologically torments.

Maybe he is his own victim.

P.S. If you made it this far, please bear with me for just one more minute and look at this clip of my favorite Jimmy Fallon moment ever. He actually thought his career was about to end, and it’s all the vindication I never knew I needed.