SALIDA, CO — In a trend that’s becoming all too common in small ski towns, one man was reported hospitalized for an extreme case of déjà vu last week at Rebecca’s Tavern in downtown Salida, Colorado. In years past, cases of stagnant locals in ski towns have shockingly risen, plaguing returning visitors with dizziness, lightheadedness and a eerie feeling, “like they’ve seen this all before.”
“As I stood waiting for my drink at the bar, I turned around saw the same group of thirty-somethings chit-chatting about the ‘Hollywood’ line right under Chair 2,” said Greg Backintown from his bed in the hospital’s emergency room. “I got this queasy, lightheaded feeling; like I had been transported back to when I lived here, five years ago. These were the same guys I used to see, sitting in the same damn seats at the bar, telling the same freakin’ story that they used to tell me when I first moved here. Something about how ‘sick’ it was when one of them ‘sent it off the nose’ of that ‘epic cliff right under the chair.’ Those dudes are like a bunch of broken records—jeez, for all I know they could’ve been drinking the same Budweisers as when I last saw them.”
Medically, these kinds of déjà vu situations are as disconcerting as they sound. “It’s quite disturbing,” said Saint Ullr Hospital emergency room doctor, Nathan Savemenow. “We learn about this ‘déjà vu’ stuff in medical school, but I never thought I’d be dealing with a real live case. Especially not one this severe. Those guys must have been telling a really, really boring story.”
Treatment for severe déjà vu is jarring yet effective. “Basically, we have to dunk the affected patient’s head repeatedly in a large bucket of ice cold water,” explained Savemenow. “The repeated submersions—sometimes up to hundreds of dunks—snap the victim back into reality and eliminate the queasy feeling. Then, we play a tape recording of Morgan Freeman reading comic book onomatopoeias out loud; we’ve found patients to be revitalized by his soothing voice saying words like ‘Pow!’, ‘Whaam!’, ‘Ker-plunk!’ and ‘Ka-pow!’”
With populations of small ski towns decreasing due to limited housing and inflated prices, experts are preparing for more cases of devastating déjà vu to overtake visitors of these beautiful vacation destinations. “Compounded by the fact that there’s no one new to talk to, locals in these places get comfortable seeing each other every day at the same bar. They end up having a few beers and all of a sudden they’re talking about that time three winters ago when it snowed so much they were making tits-deep turns down the mountain,” said Maria Housingcrisis, an expert on the subject.
As for the victim in Salida, Backintown just wanted to relive his glory days living in a small mountain community. “I just wanted to have a beer at my favorite place,” he said. “But there was something so disturbing, so jarring about the sameness of everything, that I just passed out.”
