I suppose that, since I've been posting American Idol reports lately, it will come as no big surprise to any of you that I'm a bit of a reality show junkie.

One of my all-time favorite reality shows, surpassing even Survivor, is The Amazing Race.

The 9th season or so started tonight, and I settled down to watch. After, of course, My TiVo had captured enough of it so that I could skip past the commercials. I love my TiVo.

Anyway.

For the past few seasons, I've caught myself, more times than I can count, imagining myself as part of a team competing in the show. But not for the money, and not for the adventure. Nope, I imagine it for the company.

The thought of being with that special person for the weeks that the race takes to complete, to get to know her as she gets to know me, to end our race with something better than any amount of money or pseudo reality show fame could ever buy - that's what I find myself imagining.

And it's always been the same (you get one guess) person, my imaginary partner in The Amazing Race.

Until tonight.

Because tonight, tonight I tried to imagine us together, flying over the streets of Sao Paolo, Brazil. I tried to imagine us together, and it just didn't work.

Her image didn't fit in my head. Not in that context anyway. So my imagination kept searching until it found someone that did fit. Someone else.

This was, fitting for the show I suppose, amazing to me.

I had a similar experience last Summer, and it surprised me then just as it surprised me tonight. Actually, surprised is too weak of a word. How about astonished?

Yeah, that's better. As-ton-ished.

Tonight's imaginary teammate was a different girl than the one I imagined last August. But now, as then, it's not important who it was. The simple and inescapable fact that it was anyone besides you know who is just hugely important. Incredibly telling. Massively phenomenal. Really Fucking Cool. I cannot stress this enough.

And you know what makes it even better?

Do you?

Okay, fine. I'll tell you.

Back in August, the last time I caught myself in a situation like this, I was actively fighting, valiantly trying to control my feelings for her. August, in fact, was just before I bottled those feelings up completely out of the fear that they could not be controlled, only contained, and that they were slowly but surely killing me.

But now, for various reasons, now I'm letting them flow freely again.

I'm letting them flow, and I'm letting them wash over me and through me, and I'm letting them pretty much have their way with me.

I'm letting them control me, as much as they can, but that control has weakened. Weakened to the point where I can imagine another pretty girl sitting beside me in that helicopter. Who knows? Maybe, eventually, I'll be able to imagine some other girl beside me in some other contexts. Maybe, eventually, I'll be able to imagine some other girl that, oddly enough, isn't completely wrong for me. Maybe, eventually, I'll even - get this - act upon my imaginary thoughts in hopes of bringing them to fruition.

Wouldn't that be something?