Have you ever thought about swapping lives with a celebrity, even just for a day? Tossing aside the mundane routine of hectic day-to-day life to live as one of the beautiful people, jet-setting around, waving at your adoring fans as you go about your business, living a basically carefree existence?

If I could get away from it all and trade lives with anyone, only for one day mind you since my life is pretty freakin’ sweet, only one famous name comes to mind: Sasquatch.

First of all, to my fans reading this in Canada, I would like to clarify once and for all that Sasquatch is not actually the name for citizens of Saskatchewan, and as an American I apologize for the ignorance of my brethren who have met some of your nice people and immediately looked down to check out their shoe sizes. And now on with our story.

How absolutely awesome would it be to get to live Big Foot’s life for a while? This guy is the epitome of existential living, communing with nature and subsisting totally on his finely honed self-reliance. Hell, the guy’s naked. In every redneck’s grainy first-contact sighting video and bystander description, he’s not wearing a stitch. Total freedom. The winter might suck, though.

I looked it up just for good measure, and Big Foot really gets to travel a lot, like, the kind of frequent flyer club miles distances. Since the first reported sighting, he’s been officially located in twenty-four different states, mostly the Pacific Northwest, which I hear is just a gorgeous part of the country. He apparently winters in Texas and Oklahoma according to the locals, which is really smart planning on his part because it’s warm enough for him what with all the fur and tornado season is pretty much over by then.

I guess the coolest part about being Big Foot would be the obvious immortality thing, since he’s been running around spotted by drunken lumberjacks since way back in 1811. When you’ve lived that long, you’ve seen it all. Think about it, this guy has been around for the invention of the telephone, the microwave oven, the personal computer, the Internet. He’s been alive for almost every major war, the emancipation of the slaves, the suffrage of women. The history lessons we could learn from one afternoon’s conversation with Sasquatch would be legendary, assuming he’s evolved to the level of speech instead of just grunting and pointing, that is. Oh my gosh, how cool would it be if Big Foot was actually a novelist up there in the woods? Maybe he’s really Stephen King.

According to the testimony of a man who actually claimed that he was kidnapped by Sasquatch and held against his will for almost a week, Big Foot is quite the family man and has a wife and children. They were the perfect hosts, except when the younger family member pelted him with heavy objects as he tried to flee. They embrace the vegetarian lifestyle because they really care about their health and the environment, but they aren’t stuck up or weird like the vegans. There are several independently-sighted reports that they like to throw rocks at people, so it’s possible that one of his offspring could have what it takes to play major league baseball, what with the natural love of pitching and the acuity for health foods.

From all of the purported video footage that I’ve seen, Big Foot likes to keep to himself while communing with nature, but he’s not a snob. One video that made its viral way on to the internet just yesterday even showed him politely waving at a motorist who stopped to let him cross the street. He’s just an all-around good guy, the kind of guy you’d like to have at your barbecue. If he wasn’t a vegetarian, that is, although I guess you could do a whole grilled vegetable platter for him and his family. It’s only courteous to make sure the different beliefs of all your guests are respected.

It’s entirely possible that the reason Big Foot sightings are so spread out is due to his grueling work schedule and if that’s the case I’m not sure I want to be him. I know that his job as the official spokescreature for Jack Link’s-brand beef jerky might involve fourteen-hour days while they’re in video production, and that can really be rough. Just look at all the celebrity marriages that crumble like L.A. faux bacon due to the crazy hours a two-celebrity family keeps. But if he’s got the kind of job where he can take several weeks off at a time all throughout the year, I might be interested. Of course, he’s perfect for a civil service position like game warden or fire ranger, which would be a cool job even if I wasn’t Big Foot. He could have a sucky dangerous job like moose wrangler, though, in which case I’m not physically equipped for the job.

That would be just my luck, to be the world’s shortest Sasquatch. I think if people saw me running through the woods without any clothes but I was covered in hair, they would think I was just an oversized woodchuck or a misplaced juvenile gorilla, and nobody whips out the camera phone to capture the antics of a rabid lesser primate.

The worst part about being Big Foot would probably be the would-be paparazzi. Just this week a man in North Carolina who claims to have not only seen Sasquatch on several occasions but actually “poked him the chest with this stick” released a video interview to the local news channel. The interview took place porch-side from his manifesto-writing shack, but it was very difficult to see the man as he was wearing camouflage print from head to toe. The six missing teeth were also vaguely distracting.

This mountain man claims that his dogs “got to barking” one night, so he looked out to see Sasquatch standing in his yard right next to the kudzu-covered 1983 T-top Camero that was missing one front wheel. The man shouted various obscenities at Big Foot before proceeding to poke him in the chest with a proverbial ten-foot pole in an attempt to run him off. The most damaging part of the interview was the fact that the man was actually wearing an oversized class ring from some school. I think it was Notre Dame, but I could just be projecting.

I guess it’s a classic case of thinking the nuts and berries are always greener on the other side of the Canadian wilderness, because surely there are some downsides to being Sasquatch, like the constant invasion of privacy, the restraining orders against the townsfolk, being the butt of “Messing with Sasquatch” jokes. I personally believe he’s a live-and-let-live creature, but I’m sure even Big Foot has a breaking point. I’m still waiting for the live action camera-phone footage of him snatching up the offending photographer’s equipment and smashing it on the pavement while cursing like a pre-Oscar Christian Bale. Now that’s some film I would pay to see.