Real Dreams
Last night I had one of those dreams that was of a real time I had back when I was a kid. When I woke up, I realized how rarely I do things that I really liked doing when I was young. That applies to lots of things, of course, but this dream was about the time a friend of our family built us a raft.
Every Saturday, my Mom would drive me and my brother and sisters out to the country to visits friends of hers. Well, by friends of hers I mean, friends of my dead Dad - with whom she maintained an ongoing relationship. Er, with his friends, I mean. Not my dead Dad. He was kept alive for us by the odd reference, "What are you talking about now? Are you talking about death again? Ohfergawd'ssake! Your father was cut down in the prime of his life and here you are a young girl obsessed with dying! Go outside and pick those dandelions out of the lawn - and don't just pull them out - dig down and get the root!"
This couple, I'll just call them "Bob and Ethel" lived on a river that we got to by meandering through the woods and trespassing on several properties until finally we came out on to a rocky sand shore. It was just a narrow river but it had pockets where we could swim and it was clay-based so we had fun even where it was shallow, attacking each other and taking running slides until it dipped again and we could dive down. One year, "Bob" built us a raft out of real dead branches he'd cleared out of the woods on their property. He even fashioned a steering pole for us so we could navigate the river. It was the best summer because even though we were city kids, we figured out (it was knowing the raft was there that got our synapses firing) that we could bike there on our own during the week - even though "Bob and Ethel" would be at work and we were strictly forbidden to do it by my Mother.
Eventually, every Tom, Dick and Harry knew about the raft - not to mention, the river - and we'd bike out in teams of kids. Then, one day, just as we rounded the bend on the road that took us to their long, barely visible driveway, there was "Bob" - standing at the end of the driveway, arms folded across his chest. "Sorry, kids. This is private property. You'd best be heading back home now."
I felt sick. All the way home all I could think of was how we'd blown it by telling everybody about the raft and now we probably wouldn't get to use it, either. I also felt kind of bad about "Bob and Ethel" knowing that all those kids knew where they lived now, too. They were a childless couple and pretty reclusive, so I knew it wouldn't sit well with them that their privacy had been betrayed.
Anyway, as usual, my Mother was the worst of it, "What were you thinking? Why would you do something so stupid? Is it possible for me to turn my back for a second without one of you kids trying to get killed on the highway or drowned in a river? I don't know why I bother! It seems you were born braindead! And why is it you can bike out into the middle of nowhere but you can't walk up to the store for a quart of milk without being told to do it a hundred times!" - but once she'd gotten over it the rest was a breeze. "Bob" just made us haul the raft in and bring it all the way through the woods, across several other private properties, and into his work shed. NOT to punish us, either - "It's just for safety reasons, kids. I can't do my job worrying about kids showing up all summer and maybe drowning in the river. My insurance rates would skyrocket." And he'd wink.
"Bob" always brought things around to business. As he told us later, it turned out, too, that building the raft was the best thing for his summer, as well, because it meant we were always busy playing and the adults could hang out drinking and smoking and talking about stuff we weren't supposed to hear.
Anyway, I dreamed about the raft last night and how much fun it was, steering it down the river, and I realized I almost never do things like that anymore and how disappointed I would have been in myself back then if I'd known I was going to be such a nofunnick when I became an adult. Still, having realized that I am, in fact, a nofunnick is probably half the battle.
I know, I know - what battle? Good grief, eh? Being an adult is so stupid, sometimes. Right now, today, I have no idea what my point is in being one.
