Nightmares and Playground Fights

I dunno what the heck is going on lately, I very very rarely remember any of my dreams but for the past couple of weeks I've been having some pretty wild nightmares that for whatever reason I'm waking up with full remembrance of. No meds... nothing different that I know of. Just instant blecchh.

Along with the nightmares have been a few pretty bizarre dreams tossed in just to make it interesting. The night before last was a dream 'bout a big argument with my buddy Gary. He said gas was $6 in town, I said nope, it's just $1.70. He said well it went up to $6 today. We went back and forth with that a bit and then I woke up... in that sleepy, confused state where you suddenly feel the need to work it all out in your head if that was real or a dream or something you just watched on TV.

Freaky stuff.

Sal is amazing, she can wake up and give me a verbatim play by play reenactment of her dreams. I'm always kinda jealous that she can do that... it's pretty weird, but entertaining at the same time.

A few nights ago I had one of those fights where you're swinging at the guy that you're wanting to punch, but you can't swing hard... it's like slow motion girl swings, so when you finally connect with the dream butthead, it's like you just hit him with a pillow... and he laughs. I woke up and was all loopy and mad and stuff, but it reminded me of my very first playground fight when I was in the 3rd grade.

Arnie Whiphnel. Arnie and I got along great until that fateful day on the merry go round. Back in the day we had this monstrous old iron and wood merry go round on the playground. There was a kid mangled in that thing on almost a daily basis, but this was before everyone was struggling to keep all kids safe and unharmed. There were plenty of kids back then and most folks didn't seem to mind if a few were missing appendages or limped for the rest of their lives because of a merry go round ride from hell.

Arnie and I was on the merry go round and someone was giving it the "slap and death spin" where they just stand beside it and give it a slap as often as they can to speed it up. We were hanging on for dear life, 'cause that was the game, hang on until you were either flung off or drug on the ground to your death because your foot got caught on some piece of iron as you went off of it because of centrifugal force.

Arn took me by surprise, turned loose with one hand and gave me a shove. I flew offa the merry go round like a stunt double and did a backwards somersault that did about 10 rotations and ended with me lying in the dirt by the Barbie Girls, missing my shoes and bleeding asunder.

No guy ever EVER went in the Barbie Girl zone on purpose, it was like... it was like trying to run your way out of a molasses tub being chased by saber toothed bobcats.

When I opened my eyes, all of the Barbie Girls, as if on cue, simultaneously put their hands on their hips and yelled for the playground monitor because I was "bothering them". Gah!

I hauled myself up, strode back to the merry go round where Arnie Wiphnel was still riding, spinning, and laughing. I set my little Chuck Taylors in the dirt and waited for Arn to come 'round and I snagged him by his belt.

Arnie came off so fast he got the ol "foot caught in the bowels" trick and he dragged around for about 2 spins or so before he came loose. He got up madder 'n hell but dizzy and fell back down. I knew this was my chance and I made a flying leap and landed in the middle of his back and proceeded to pummel the back of his head with the fury of 9 year old fists.

Those back of the head shots are deadly.

Arnie, being bigger than me, kinda stood up with me on his back and I fell off onto the ground while he gave me a good kick to my foot. I jumped up and lunged at him just as he lunged at me and we both got a handful of each others shirts and started the old windmill routine.

Lord.

We spun and spun and spun and spun, inflicting all sorts of dizziness to one another. That was the main purpose of the windmill I think. Just when I was trying to think of a move to make to end Arnie's life the playground monitor's whistle blew about 3 feet from our heads.

We both stopped windmilling, turned loose.... staggered sideways rappidly in opposite directions... and fell down.

We got hauled up by our arms and made a tiptoe speedwalk across the playground, while the monitor kinda shook us like little tennis shoed bath towels, straight into the school and directly into the principal's office where we got a stern talking to about citizenship and the army. That's how I remember the talk anyhow, but it sure doesn't make much sense now.



I had more than a few playground and locker room scuffles after that first deflowering, but probably none so exciting as getting dizzied up with Arnie Whiphnel.












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