It was stupid of me not to look both ways before crossing the street, I know that. I guess I was distracted by the email saying I’d been accepted into U Chicago, my dream school.

There was just enough time to see the truck before it hit me, and in that moment, I thought my young life was over. But when I opened my eyes, I was completely fine. Well, physically fine, anyway. But I was somewhere unfamiliar, sitting in a vast grassy field. I thought maybe it was Heaven at first, despite not being particularly religious. Now I know better.

There’s this hugely popular genre of stories about a kid who’s transported to a world of magic. Usually he’s nobody special, a loner, someone who doesn’t do so well in school. He’s a misfit, spends his time daydreaming about the fantastical kingdoms in his comic books and video games, wishing he could live there instead of in the boring real world. And then some kind of accident sends him to a strange new land, where his hidden skills make him perfectly suited to becoming a legendary adventurer.

But I think there’s been some kind of mistake. See, I’m a solid A student. I’ve got plenty of friends, and I don’t have social anxiety or autism or anything like that. I’ve never been accused of having my head in the clouds, and I have good time management skills. Video games and fantasy stories have never really appealed to me. I’m pretty well-adjusted, and my relationship with my parents is a lot better than most people my age. I have a number of extracurricular interests, including jazz band, track, and debate team. I collect old point and shoot cameras from the early 2000s, and I like listening to podcasts about investing. In other words, I had a pretty good life on Earth.

But here? I don’t have any idea what’s going on. There’s elves and pixies everywhere and sometimes a dragon shows up and starts setting people on fire. A talking cat monster keeps telling me that I’m the chosen one, that I need to “level up” and learn magic spells and things like that. To be honest, I feel kind of stupid for not having played many video games now because maybe if I had I’d have a better handle on all of this. My bad for spending my time developing financial literacy and practicing baritone sax, I guess.

Is this Hell? Some kind of ironic punishment? Or is this experience supposed to teach me something? Like, am I supposed to learn to cut loose and go with the flow? I already did that every Friday night when my friends and I got Taco Bell and played Cards Against Humanity.

I don’t know. It just seems like somebody screwed up. Like there’s some shy loser out there who’s going through the motions of his sad existence when he should be “grinding for XP” here. I don’t even know what that means, it’s just something else the cat monster said. It’s obvious that I don’t belong here. I’m really not interested in swords or wizards and I liked the girls back home a lot better than the ones here who dress like medieval strippers.

Maybe they’ll send me back soon. I hope so. I’m almost out of new episodes of Andrew Huberman’s podcast, and I don’t know if UC lets you defer to take a gap year in Narnia.