(Sound of Tuning Radio)
Cash: Incoming broadcast from the staff of Desert Skies
Mac (Singing): Desert Skies FMMMMM
Tendy: Greetings Travelers! Attendant here with the Mechanic.
Mac: One’s a little strong. One’s a little bendy. The stronger one is Mac. The bendy one is Tendy.
Tendy: Yeah, well. One’s a little short…
Mac: Watch it.
Tendy: Anyways, traveler wherever you are on the Astral Plane, just know that we’re glad we had the opportunity to meet you and are wishing you the safest of travels. That said, all the wishes in the world won’t keep you from landing in a precarious situation. That, my friends, requires knowledge and caution. It’s time for your safety tip of the day.
Mac (Singing): Safe travel tip for travelers on the Astral Plane.
Tendy: You may have found yourself wondering, if the Astral Highway is meant to provide travelers the means of making a one way trip, why are there two lanes?
Mac: I’ve always assumed it was so you could pass other travelers who were perhaps taking their sweet ass time.
Tendy: Well, first, if someone does choose to take their sweet time then they have every right to do so. And also, yeah, that’s one of the reasons.
But another reason is sometimes you might miss an exit you meant to take. When consulting your official Desert Skies Map you’ll notice that there are a number of stops along the Astral Highway that are designed to assist you on your trip. Rest stations, for instance, are for relieving yourself of emotional burdens you’ve carried from the physical plane, communication stations where you can reach the staff of Desert Skies should you have questions.
Mac: Our phone has not rang in sometime.
Tendy: No. No it hasn’t.
Tendy: So anyways, just to repeat, the reason the highway has two lanes is for passing passengers who are driving a little slower.
Mac: Taking their sweet ass time.
Tendy: (Sigh) and if you miss an exit and need to turn around. And that’s your safe travel tip of the day.
Mac: I feel safer already. Thanks, Tendy. Now, here’s a segment I like to call Rest Your Weary Soul. (Sings) Rest your weary soul.
Traveler, sometimes we beat ourselves whenever we make a bad decision. Sometimes, we make lots of bad decisions and it makes us feel just terrible. Believe it or not, I have actually made a number of bad decisions.
Tendy: Anything bad decisions you’ve made recently?
Mac: Not now Tendy
Tendy: Like as recently as right before this broadcast.
Mac: This is a monologue Tendy, not a dialogue.
Tendy: It’s funny that you should mention monologues.
Mac: Okay. I get it. I get it. This message goes out to a recent traveler named Elias Haddon. Eli, before you visited the station I was going to eat the last jelly donut but Tendy said I couldn’t and I was worried you were going to eat it so I microwaved a tootsie role till it was soft and put it on top of the donut and when you got here you looked at the donuts but decided not take one and I asked why and you said because one had poop on it, but it wasn’t poop it was a tootsie roll so you left without getting snacks and after you left Tendy said fine, just eat it so I did and afterwards I felt bad.
Tendy: Confession is good for the soul.
Mac: Can I get back to my segment now?
Tendy: Please proceed.
Mac: Yeah, thanks. So anyways, like I was sayin. We all make bad decisions, and even the best of us probably made quite a few bad decisions when we were livin on the physical plane. Maybe you didn’t get a chance to say I’m sorry before you bit the dust. Maybe you did say I’m sorry, but you never did anything about it. It was just words.
Now, here you are on the other side. No more chances to make things right. And it leaves us with a wealth of regret and sorrow. What do you do with that emotion?
Well I’ll tell you what you can’t do with it. You can’t try to pretend like it doesn’t exist. That’s like pretendin’ that you don’t have a bad haircut. Bad haircuts don’t get better with time, they become much worse more noticeable bad haircuts. So you got this funky, whacky, crappy haircut and what you should do is go to the barber and get it fixed.
But nah, you just wear a hat. Every day before you pop that hat on you look in the mirror and you see that haircut. All day long you know that your haircut is bad but hey, at least it’s hidden. But wait, dummy. Hair growwws. So now you got hair stickin’ out the bottom of your hat. Oh geez.
The truth is, when we try to bury that guilt and remorse for the things we did it doesn’t go away, it just grows. And pretty soon it turns out it starts showing up in ways that we can’t hide anymore. And sometimes it’s in real ugly ways.
So don’t put those feelings under a hat. Sit with ‘em. Look at ‘em for what they are. Painful careless things we did that hurt people. Things we wish didn’t exist but do.
It would have been better to have done something about it on the physical plane, but that ship has sailed. No worries, though. There’s is something you can do about it. Tell ‘em bout the wall Tendy. Tendy, are you crying?
Tendy: What? Um. A little. Thanks, Mac. I’m sorry for making a big deal out of the Tootsie Roll on the donut.
Mac: You should be, Tendy. You don’t know how to drop things.
Tendy: So, like Mac said. Rest areas are a great place to be relieved of emotional burdens, and the rest area on the 17th sphere is no exception. Relief of burdens from the physical plane don’t come cheap though, they require a little something from us. On the 17th sphere’s rest area you’ll find the big book of reconciliation. This book is a place for travelers to record the things they wish they’d made amends for on the Physical Plane.
Mac: It’s like writing a letter to the person you wrong’d. But there’s a few important things. When you write the wrong, name the wrong. Don’t try to make it sound like less than it was, that doesn’t help nothin. And another thing, don’t call yourself mean names. Just cause you did somethin’ wrong, doesn’t mean you are somethin’ wrong. It’s important to remember the difference.
Tendy: There’s always a chance the person you may have hurt on the physical plane will take a look at the book and find the letter you wrote them. In fact, I get the feeling they will.
Mac: And that’s not as good as it could have been before we died, but I’m sure you’ll find it helpful, and certain it will bring some rest to your weary soul.
Tendy: Whoa. That was a big fat emotional one, Mac. Now, switching gears. To travelers freshly arriving from the physical plane. Yes, you’re driving a Buick Skylark on a desert highway. No, you’re not hallucinating, all will be explained when you arrive at Desert Skies. Where you’ll find all your road trip favorites.
If you grew up with parents that weren’t great at making a healthy breakfast, do we have the snack for you. Poptarts! The brown sugar ones that taste like nothing but themselves. The strawberry ones that taste like nothing resembling a strawberry, and the Astral Plane exclusive, a Poprock Poptart. Why would the makers of poptarts create such a thing? They didn’t.
Mac: I did, and I don’t know why! Sometimes I’m like that!
Tendy: And that’s our broadcast. Safe travels.