Monday, January 4, 2010

Naught but a dream

Note: This was originally written on Wednesday, September 10, 2008. I was sorting through my documents and found it. Just a couple minor edits and here it is. Even though it is sort of embarrassing, I find it worth sharing mostly because it is a rare occurrence when I recall my dreams, specially the good ones.

Last night I had this most delightful dream. I got up in the morning feeling quite good, but at the same time I was grumpy because it was over.

That’s how you mess up your mind’s simulator, by waking up. Before it has a chance to transfer all the data to your subconscious, where it will be used to make faster calculations in the future, you regain consciousness, cluttering your system with useless data that is still being shuffled around. The data will be eventually sorted out, and eventually you forget the dream, being awake just slows down the process. Like defragmenting your hard drive while you’re using the computer. Besides that minor glitch is quite a splendid system. If you ever find yourself completely naked in front of an audience, you will know exactly how to react, or at least you will double check you are decent before stepping outside.

In my dream I was back in what felt like the early nineties. I must have been in about 8th to 10th grade. I was feeling a lot more confident than I did back in the day, and even though I couldn’t see myself in the dream, I knew I looked better, I felt healthier, like I feel now (back in ‘08 after losing about 30 pounds and gaining the ability to do pushups). Yeah, most probably my teenage years would have been better if I had laid off the videogames. It was dark outside, and there were a couple drops of water on the windows, like it had rained before. I was sitting in the back seat of a brand new SUV (back in the day SUVs were the bomb), right behind the driver. At the wheel there was a nice looking middle-aged man (upper-middle class, judging by the ride), to his side a female of the same demographic. They never looked back, as if they trusted me. I could feel they liked me, but they were not my parents, they were the parents of the lovely girl by my side. She was also in her early teens, athletic build, long, straight black hair, and a great smile. Yes, she was smiling, but that’s all I remember, that and that she was pretty, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you how.

This is just the setting. It was like me and the girl were on some kind of date and her parents had come to pick us up and were on their way to take me home. What puzzles me is why my mind would place me in such a situation. Whatever I learned from this simulation has little or no strategic value. Maybe the lesson was that I should keep an eye on the rear-view mirror whenever I pick up my daughters from a date? Nah, that would be absurd, my daughters will not go on dates until they’re at least 30.

Now here’s what happened. We were riding along, and everyone was quiet. My right hand was lying on my knee, and with her index finger she scribbled something on the back of my hand. It felt like she was being shy about it, like she didn’t want me to notice. She wasn’t even looking at me. I was actually looking so I followed the movement of the finger and actually made out what she wrote. And just like my narration paused, the dream itself paused for a moment (I’m pretty sure my brain must have taken hours just to figure what to do next). So I put my other hand on top of hers. I held her hand and stared blankly out the window. I was holding my breath trying not to sigh, or to giggle. Like I didn’t notice, but kinda like maybe I did. I was sitting there thinking how my life was so great… then I woke up. 10 seconds of action, yet it felt like hours.

So today I was lying in bed about to fall asleep, when it all came rushing back. I thought I’d write it down before my brain finished defragmenting.

Will I ever be in a situation in which teenage romance will save my life? I highly doubt so. Still I am glad I had this dream. I had a very depressing adolescence, and this is certainly what I would have wanted it to be like. It’s something I never had and never will have, and it felt like I was really there, like I was really 15 years younger and things were going my way. It felt really nice, and I don’t want to forget that, even if it never happened.

Well, that was random. I gotta go back to bed.


TMI? Probably.

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