I had a terrible day yesterday.
I had to go in early to work, we had some company training
all afternoon. After which we went to
work. Since we went in early, we got to
leave earlier than usual. So I called
home and told the family to wait for me, as I would try to get there in time to
go to swimming practice to watch the kids.
I got there in time, and we went to swimming. I played some of the kid's and my favorite
music on the way there. We all sang out
loud to Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive" and "Want You
Gone". Both are end credit songs
for the video games Portal, and Portal 2; respectively. It was pretty fun.
Once we arrived, we went upstairs into the gallery, and the
kids went and did their thing. Watching
my youngest swim was pretty fun. I
hadn't seen him swim in the program yet, due to scheduling conflicts with
work. I enjoyed it. He has never had real swim lessons, and is
improving very quickly.
I guess I'll make a long story short, and tell that after my
son swam, and went to the locker room to change; some hijinks occurred where
another boy's clothes got thrown on the floor of the locker room, and lots of
water was sprayed all over. I gave my
son a talking to, he got intensely angry with me, and informed us that he
didn't like me. He didn't want to grow
up to be a geek like me. He wished I
could be a "regular" dad, like some of the others, and not good with
computers, and always writing things. He
wants me to just throw the football around with him more often.
We don't even own a football.
He broke my heart with what he said, and how he said it.
I didn't help matters when I descended all too willingly to
his 9 year old level.
He looks at me very cool and angry, informing me, "I
don't like you, and I don't want to hug you."
I look back sadly, and tell him, "Well, I don't want to
hug you right now either."
Yeah, I'm a 40 year old child. But then, we knew this, right? ~Sigh~
I was put into a funk for the rest of the evening. Nothing good came of it.
When I decided it was time to go to bed, I wished intensely
for a night without dreams.
Of course, that wish wasn't granted.
The first dream I remember, was in a fancy hotel room. I was sharing it with CNET's Brian Tong for
some reason. No hanky panky going on
that I could tell, but that is certainly weird.
For some reason, the large bathtub is in a separate room,
right next to the regular bathroom that has a shower. Brian went into the bathtub, and made lots of
bubblebath. He starts talking to me
about Apple computers and my choice in iPhones.
I think he was trying to convince me to get a new iPhone 4s. All the while, he is covered with bubblebath,
on top of his head even, like a little kid.
I decide to get into the shower in the next room. We both keep our doors open a smidge, so he
just keeps talking about the tech stuff to me.
It's like a CNET podcast, from the evil Star Trek world. He didn't have a goatee though, so that
doesn't hold up. But still!
I'm putzing around in the big shower, shaving, washing,
enjoying the huge luxury shower. Suddenly
I have to pee, and I try real hard not to, as it seems like that would be rude
to pee in a luxury shower or something.
But, I have to go super bad, so I start to let it go.
That's when I wake up, and have to pee real bad.
If you know me, and maybe you have these too, they are what
I call "Pee Dreams". If you
don't heed the call of the Pee Dream, and get up and go, you could have a real
mess on your hands!
It just so happens, the kids and my wife were up getting
ready for school. I went to the bathroom,
and checked in on them. Nobody needed
anything, so I told my daughter to hustle up, as it was almost time for the
schoolbus. Then I went back to bed.
Pulled the covers up over my head, and fell back to sleep
for an hour or two.
This time, I dreamed of an old friend. I dreamt I was at the family cottage, back
before it was torn down to make way for the modern home my parents retired
in. It was back when I was living there
in the 1990's. My parents were there
too, visiting for the weekend I think.
When Miss Moon pulled into the driveway.
Moon is a friend I made during a pretty trying time in my life, which
I'll discuss someday. She wasn't the
source of any of the issues back then, just a nice friend from that era.
Apparently, Moon had given me a bunch of her stuff when she
moved out of some apartment or something.
We started pulling boxes of stuff out of the darndest of places, as you
can only do in dreams. Looking under the
couches, produced an impossible array of boxes, all with her name on them. A few of the boxes showed up things that I
had thought never to see again. She gave
these back to me, saying that she got them from her Ex, and the Ex had been
going to burn that stuff to get back at me (part of a bigger story!!), because
it all meant something to me.
In the box was my old Swiss Army knife, with my initials on
it; my old arrowhead necklace; keys to my old Chrysler; and some poems that I
had handwritten as gifts.
This was meaningful for some reason.
I went to one of the closets looking for more of her
stuff. when I opened the old tan vinyl
accordion door, I found my old High School letterman jacket. It was moldy looking, still sporting the
stupid button pins I had worn on it in high school: The light blue "I smell Snarlmeat!"; and the Monty Python's Flying Circus pins.
Still pinned to the large letter E on the left breast.
Below the letterman's E on the left, though, was something
newer. A mission patch from my time at
Pratt & Whitney Flight Test. Had our
dark blue Boeing airplane, with the orange wingtips, nose, and tail. With some engine test designator that I
didn't recognize at all. I took the
jacket down, and a pile of other patches fell out of the pocket.
These patches were all the ones that I thought I had lost
after we moved out of the condo in NY. I
had been going to get them sewn onto a leather flight jacket, so as to make a
sort of "I love me" jacket.
Like the military people make with all of their mission stuff. Some of them have "I love me
walls", in their houses or offices with similar things.
Actually, lots of people do this. It's the space on your wall where you put all
the things you are proud of, that you wouldn't mind if people saw. Pictures of cool places, you shaking hands
with recognizable people, awards, models, etc.
You get the idea.
Your I Love Me Wall.
I had thought I would never see these stupid patches
again. I was pretty happy to have them
in my hands again.
That's when I woke up for the second time.
I'm baffled as to what my dreams mean. The first one, lets be honest, seems a little
bit gay. Brian Tong is a 30-ish year old
Asian American. Very good looking, and
fit. With great hair. Maybe I have a secret crush on him. Who knows?
As for the second, what the heck? I haven't seen Moon since 1992. I certainly don't have any of her stuff, and
the stuff I got back in the dream, really is gone. I am pretty sure she doesn't have it. I'm Facebook friends with her now though, so
I suppose that's how she got dragged into the dream.
As for the letterman jacket and the patches. Now I'm going to have to open up a few boxes
to find it. And check to make sure my
patches aren't anywhere in it, on it, or near it. There is always the chance that my subconscious
was revealing where the heck those things were hiding. I can't think of what else it could
mean.
But then, I am a bear of very little brain.
I am going to buy a football. If my son wishes I could be more of a jock
for him; then I'll throw the ball around with him.
I keep telling myself that there is too much to do around
here for me to take time away from it when I'm home to play around like
that.
But I take time to write things like this, and my
poetry. Does that mean I think this
stuff is more important than what my son wants, and maybe needs from me?
Honestly, the answer is yes.
But I'm a self admitted self centered child; so I know that the initial
'yes' answer is wrong. The 40 year old
dad in me will take charge, and buy the football, and teach his kids to throw
it. Then I'll throw it on the ground and
show him what I used to have to do when my coach did that to me.
Which is try to be the first one to pile on top of that
ball, of course!!
Unless your name is Chris Melton, then you pick up the ball
and run it for a touchdown. Shameful, Chris! Glory hound, what if you'd dropped it?
God, I get all green with jealousy for him doing that even
to this day! Frickin' twenty two years
ago, High School football glory envy.
Makes me want to drive to Texas
and buy him a beer or something.
I've got pinewood derby car kits coming in the mail, we'll
be building those over the next few weeks.
Hopefull that will butch up my image with my kid.
I am what I am. I'm
just coming to terms with it after 40 years.
Now I'm dealing with angry peer pressure from my own kids. Life just never ceases to stop throwing curve
balls at you I reckon.
Maybe someday I'll learn how to hit them, instead of
striking out.
Cheers, to the strange sad dreams of a middle aged pre
pubescent.
*hugs*
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