THE 50 YEAR HIGH SCHOOL REUNION
Recently, about a year ago or so I was invited to the reunion of the 50th anniversary of my high school graduating class. Called by a guy I vaguely remembered, we talked about our lives and about my attendance. I said I would not.
Here are the reasons.
I had a crush on a few girls. Admiring their slender bodies, those wonderful maturing bodies with developing breasts and legs of infinite beauty. I shared friendships with guys who shared my interests. We all were young looking to the future.
Honestly, I do not want to know if those young, hopeful classmates fulfilled their dreams. How the world treated their hopes. I do not want to know of the failed marriages, the disappointing careers, the lives spent in no way matching what they planned. And perhaps I do not want them to know how my life and dreams came to fruition not planned.
Avoiding the reunion, gives me the opportunity to preserve the memory of those youthful smiles, faces full of hope and dreams. I do not want those visions erased by the reality of the elderly remnants of a past gone. And foremost, I do want the knowledge of those who have died.
This is a weakness.
When I have a dear friend dying, I visit while we can talk about passed experiences. While we can talk about life but never their thoughts of what comes next.
I have no desire to gaze upon the reality of life while remembering the past while those I held dear are they nothing but shells waiting for the end. I want to remember them, all of them, with eyes to the future, not how that future dealt with their dreams.
December 9, 2017 at 10:02 pm
THE END
For our country,
I feel this
Is the beginning
Of the end.
And we
Are in part
Responsible.
I once used a line in a poem, ‘a sadness too deep to be real’.
It is becoming real.
There are still those full of poetry, stories and art. They struggle to survive and they always will. But greed has taken over this country.
The only comfort for me personally is that I will be dead when this great country’s dream is unrecognizable.
November 16, 2017 at 12:21 am
In this day of diminishing viable jobs and stagnant wages, how does the poor, proud family survive?
The cost of living at a decent level, the cost of food and everything else continues to rise while the worker who produces these commodities remains constant.
For most, this is no longer the country of dreams. It has become the country of nightmares.
May 24, 2016 at 7:34 pm
My consistent readers,
I am a dreamer. What writer isn’t?
We dream of people reading our work, and enjoying it. Or maybe, finding something our effort says to them, and those of us that are bold dream of making a profit.
I also happen to be a dreamer at night with my imagination going full-bore. When I say this is based on a true dream, I am not joking.
THE DREAM CATCHER
Based on a true dream
Walt was a dreamer, but on occasion, there were consequences.
His wife, Joni, yelled, “Knock it off.” It was the dead of night, about 3 AM, and approaching winter. Thank God the windows were closed or the neighbors might have gotten the wrong idea.
Joni often shouted, “Knock it off,” or “Leave me alone,” no matter what the level of the windows. However, their two cats were usually the problem, either trying to sleep beside her or getting into a scuffle. But in the wee hours of the morning, Walt was usually the guilty party.
Walt had a most active imagination, both day and night, and night was the problem. Day was good; as a writer, when his imagination was working at full-steam-ahead, that was beneficial. At night, full-steam-ahead was a drawback, especially for Joni. His dreams were beyond vivid; they were an alternate life. He remembered them in great detail. Some he could recall clearly and think about them when awake. There were nights when he would revisit a location from past dreams to experience new adventures.
On one particular night, the basis of this story, in his dream Walt attended a baseball game. Sitting along the first base line, he hoped to snag a foul ball. The problem was that none came anywhere near him, and the game was half over. Then it began; they started coming his way. The balls, arching over the spectators, had a dream-like quality. (Wonder why?) Try as he might, Walt could not catch one. They sailed by just out of reach, or were caught by someone else before he had a chance. For some strange reason, every time he tried to catch a ball he would hit the head of a blond-headed man sitting in front of him. After this occurred a few times, he heard the cry, “Knock it off!”
Walt had constantly been rubbing Joni’s head.
He sheepishly said, “I’m sorry,” and went back to sleep.
The following morning, over breakfast, he related his dream. Joni more or less took it in stride for he’d been known to react to dreams with her on the receiving end. We won’t go into how many times he dreamt he was falling over a wall and wound up on the floor with a crash. Walt was not a small person. While they were eating, he joked, “Tonight I’m taking my softball glove to bed.”
Joni rolled her eyes, told him in no uncertain terms what she thought of the idea, and went to work.
That afternoon Walt rummaged through the garage until he found his old glove. When night came, he waited until Joni was in the bathroom and gently placed the glove between their pillows.
As she prepared to climb into bed, she saw the glove, shook her head and said, “You’re nuts.”
Lights out, Walt hoped to return to the game. Before long, he was once again seated near first base. Soon the foul balls began coming his way. One after another, his glove met them all. He was a catching machine. He couldn’t miss. That night Joni had a good night’s sleep. No mussing her hair.
Walt awoke refreshed with his glove on his hand. “Must have put it on during the night,” he said to himself. He got out of bed and immediately crashed to the floor, stumbling on the scattered baseballs.
Joni peered over the edge of the bed. “Not again,” she said. “This has got to stop.
“Remember the time you dreamed about trapping skunks? It took us a month to fumigate the house.”
That night, Joni had an idea. She waited until Walt began snoring, and then began quietly whispering over and over, “Electronics, money. Electronics, money.”
May 9, 2011 at 4:56 pm
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