Have you ever seen something and been convinced you imagined it?
Welcome to my life, baby.
When I was in America, I worked, for a time, in a ski resort. We were the housekeeping people - cleaning toilets, vacuuming, picking up filthy towels people had used to clean themselves after sex - and it was the worst job I ever had. The benefits were taking photographs of our arses with the guests' cameras (for them to discover after they'd left and got the films developed), and having a group of nutcases to hang around with.
One of them was my mate called Ken, a bloke from Northern Ireland, who loved booze and grass as much as I did. We'd just discovered little grass pipes, and were always getting off our tits on the excellent local weed. One of our hangouts was the roller skating rink. We couldn't skate for shite, but every now and then we'd drag ourselves down there to have a go, convinced that this time we'd get the hang of it. Of course, every time we'd just end up staggering about, falling over, and swearing. Then we'd give up and go and get wrecked.
One day, we met up, and Ken was just about shitting himself to tell me the news: according to him, a group of dwarves had just checked in, to do some ski-ing and check out the local scenery. He was always saying shit like this, and I didn't hear it from anyone else, so I just laughed, and humoured him.
"I'm fuckin tellin ya," he insisted, eyes bulging. "Fuckin dwarves, like! 30 of the fuckers! I swear to fuck!"
Yeah, sure. 30 dwarves just moseyed on into town, and nobody else noticed. Okay.
We then went and smoked some grass, and decided to try the roller skating again. This time, we were determined that we would succeed. The grass had made us strong, we could conquer this demon. We would really do it, properly, and no fucker was going to stand in our way.
We staggered into the rink building, and demanded our skates. Oh yeah, we were in charge, no doubt about that. We strapped up, and clumped our way into the rink itself. Perfect - there was nobody else there. We wouldn't look so stupid if we fell. We started wobbling around, and making the usual attempts at moving without falling.
And you know, we almost had it. Dammit, Janet, we almost fucking had it.
That was the point when 30 dwarves roller-skated onto the rink, all holding on to each other's hips, skating around perfectly in a snake formation like they were on stage or something. They broke up, and started figure skating, doing loops, figures of 8, pirouettes, leaps, and all sorts of other comical shit that you just don't expect to see all of a sudden. Especially not done by 30 dwarves, appearing out of nowhere, that you didn't even believe existed.
Ken went to pieces.
"AAAAAAAAAAH!" he howled at me. "Fuckin dwarves!"
We staggered off the rink, holding each other up and crying with laughter, and gave up on the skating forever. I haven't tried it since.
We got very drunk that night.
I'm sure I didn't imagine the whole thing, not even my mind could come up with something like that. But sometimes I wonder.