WEIRD SHIT

My smart-phone alarm went off at 6:30 this morning and of course, it woke me up. I had been dreaming a weird dream, not unlike many that come and go as I sleep, where I was in a parent-teacher conference with a man I knew in the dream, but not in real life. His kid had failed and I was explaining why. He understood, perplexed that he had no influence with the malcontent teenager. The redundant buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz of my alarm interrupted both sleep and dream and I was back in my own world again but I had absolutely no idea where I was. In a minor quandary, I was trapped by the need to know where I was and the urge to get up and turn off the alarm. It seemed like a long time but then I remembered the rain and the unfamiliar bed; I was at Motel 6 in Horn Lake, Mississippi. It all came back and I got up. Sometimes it’s clear and lucid, other times, who knows why, I’m in a fog. But a long hot shower helps and I’m killing time as I have more time today than miles to travel. 

My better half-lady in Louisiana takes all dreams seriously and tries to analyze them all, hers and mine as well. I recall the old poster of an egg, burning to a crisp in a smoking skillet with the tag line, “Your brain on drugs.” I think my dreams are about a hot, empty skillet. Instead of eggs it is shuffling nonessential cards from different decks into a meaningless movie for me to suffer through. Sleep is better than insomnia but the dreaming is like most TV programming, best appreciated unplugged. But something else will require my attention soon as I have five and a half hours to drive today. A late start won’t be of consequence today and I can take my time over eggs and coffee. 

There is one dream that has never dissolved, never melted away in the chamber of nonsense. It remains fresh and clear even though it is really old. I was in high school, several years before I took up sky diving; maybe a precursor or a harbinger of things to come, but I had this dream. I was falling, free falling from high altitude and I could see the ground rushing up. All of a sudden I recognized where I was, where I would land. In junior high we had a barn yard between our barn and the house where we played baseball. We had to clean cow pies off the baselines before we started but it was level and had good grass. Anyway, I was going to land on our impromptu baseball field. It happened so fast, I just leaned back, hooked my foot behind the other knee and slid into second base. I left a trench, like a plow furrow, where I slid from out in right field straight up to the base and I thought I’d be in trouble for sure when my dad got home. I woke up, went to school but I didn’t tell anyone about my dream, they would have teased me about it. The last people in the world you tell your weird shit are your friends.