Tag: women

A Sweet Dream Trilogy

I’m not going into details about dreams last night. I think, remembering so much, it would consume chunks of time and I have things planned that need time. So, in summary.

I dreamed first that I was with men in the military. It was not the U.S. military, but I don’t know what nation it was from. I was a young man, training the men how to build things. We were just finishing up, and it had been very success. I was basking in popularity. Young women came along. To help with celebrations for finishing, they set up a small store. The white store was decorated in purple and pink with heavy glitter, amusing me. They were giving out candy that was in buckets. A place beside them was grilling food. Everyone, including me, was eating, and having a good time.

Then, dream change, I was with a group of women. Again, I was a young man. We were out in a meadow surrounded by lush, heavy forests. It was a small group. The women were variously dressed in white, purple, or yellow gowns. I’m not certain what I wore. I think I may have been wearing orange. I was teaching the women. We were just finishing when a flock of birds flew overhead, seizing our attention. I said to them, “That’s a fitting ending.”

The third was briefest, where I, once again, a young man, was in a little classroom in a small, old schoolhouse, teaching young children. The schoolhouse was white. We were sitting on the wooden floor. I was talking to them, telling them stories, and they were laughing and cheering in response.

Remembering the dreams invigorates me and makes me smile. All were so sweet and affirming, even if it doesn’t come off that way in my brief captures. If only all dreams left such a positive impact when we awaken and take on the day.

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The Blemish Dream

Big, building. Warehouse or hanger. Don’t know. Not specified. Lot of other folks. Most are young or middle-aged. I’m young, late twenties. I’m working on a computer. Requires me to press F3 to enter data. I’m doing it, happily. Others are gathering. Most are strangers who introduce themselves to me. Many attractive young women. They take an interest in me.

Something is spilled on my shirt. No problem, I’ll change it. I take that one off to go find another one. A middle-aged woman interrupts me. She’s talking about mentoring me. I’m pleased. Two young women, crushing on me, come and sit by me. They’re very flirtatious. I enjoy the attention. Then, something subtly changes. They suddenly withdraw a little. I don’t know why.

A man my age comes along. He takes me aside. “Dude, you have a large blemish on your back.”

“I do?” I reach back, trying to feel it, twist around, stupidly attempting to see it. “Where is it? What is it?”

“I can show you. Come on.”

We walk. He’s talking as we go, trying to explain what the blemish is and where. I’m thinking, inflamed pimple or black head. He’s telling me, no, it’s not quite like that. Than what is it?

Others intercept us. He’s taken away for a moment but says he’ll be right back. Meanwhile, the mentor woman comes up. “You have a blemish on your back,” she says. “You need to put a shirt on and cover that up. It’s a distraction.”

Okay, but I want to know more about the blemish. “I can show you,” she answers.

We go off together to look. But then we’re separated. I turn around and she’s not there.

I decide that I need to pee. I head for the bathroom. It’s a cluttered place with a guard at the door. A friend is behind me. He tells me that I have a blemish on my back. I should put a shirt on. I answer, yes, I know. Head in to pee.

The ‘bathroom’ doesn’t resemble anything like a bathroom. Completely cluttered with junk. Looking around, I ask, “Where is the toilet?” I really need to pee by now. Finding a drain, I piss into it. Screw it. Like it’ll make a difference in that place.

I leave to go back to entering data. Two more friends approach and mention the blemish on my back, making it a total of five who mentioned it. The mentoring woman gathers us. As everyone goes to her, I slip off and find an oversized black tee-shirt. It’s been in my wardrobe but I’ve worn it. It a souvenir from somewhere, with writing on the front.

The mentoring woman tells the gathering to go to another area. I help lead the way because I understand where she indicated. We’re directed to a corner. I recognize it as the ‘bathroom’ location. That confuses me, but yes, the same guard is within, validating our identity and letting us pass. I’m surprised as anything. We’re going into the bathroom?

But, yes. In the bathroom is a tube with a ladder. We climb it and find ourselves in a dining hall of picnic tables. I find a table and sit. Another young woman comes over and asks if she can sit with me. The other two young woman witness this. They look jealous as the newcomer sits with me. She’s very touchy, patting my hand, my shoulder, letting her hand linger on me. Another woman joins me on my other side and starts flirting with me. I’m amused to be the center of so much attention, and a little uncomfortable.

The dream ends.

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A Watch Dream Snippet

It was a long, coherent dream last night, one that seemed like The Great Escape or The Irishman, a movie that went on for several hours. 

I’d come into money. From that, I’d bought new property. After leaving it, I went with seven others to wander and explore the area.

We were four couples. One couple was my sister-in-law and her daughter. Another was my sister and her friend. A young couple, man and woman, were the third, and my wife and I were the final couple. I knew the young couple in the dream, but I can’t place them in my life.

We stopped, sitting at a table under some trees. The table became a rendezvous location. While I sat, the others came and went, shopping and visiting with people, etc.

A package wrapped in brown paper was brought to me. I opened it. Inside were watches. Some were gold but several were silver. All were new. Most were jewel encrusted. “Oh, yes, I ordered them,” I told the others, trying watches on. The others were exclaiming over them. I was dismayed. The watches were expensive but gaudier than anything that I would wear.

I began giving them to others. “Here, take a watch. Wear a watch.” I had more watches than I realized and wondered why I’d ordered so many, laughing at myself for that. The young man (of the couple) came up and asked, “May I take a watch?”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Take a watch, please.”

The dream went on (with the same four couples), but that was the watch part.

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The Destination Dream

I was moving again in last night’s dream. My home that I was selling was a large white house. Built circa the 1950s – hey, that’s when I was born – the home featured a large front porch, two sprawling sugar maple trees, and a large green yard with squared off sidewalks.

The dream’s beginning found me doing yard work. I was busy and happy. In a brief aside, I then go to work and tell a woman how to use a specific computer program to conduct a search. She’s mute during the entire exchange, leaving me doubtful about whether she understood what the search could do to save her time, or if she understand what I told her. I would check back on her.

As I returned to yard work, my wife accosted me. She needed to go to an organizing event for some activity that she was involved with, and wanted me to drive her. We argued briefly, but I resigned myself. We would take our truck, I told her, leading her to a small Ford Courier or Chevy LUV sized vehicle, in other words, a small truck. A white tarp covered the truck. When I pulled the tarp aside, I had to dump water off the tarp, and worried about the trunk having water damage. But it seemed fine. Weirdly, the trunk had no top.

I got in one side, and was awaiting my wife. Two other women got in as well. I asked them who they were, and they said that my wife told them that they could get a ride with us. I had not problem with that, but then realized I didn’t have a steering wheel because I was on the wrong side of the truck. After getting out and circling the truck, I told the woman behind the steering wheel that she needed to move. She wanted to know why. I told her that I needed the steering wheel, which made her laugh.

As I waited for her to move, I looked at my sidewalks under the sugar maples. They all ha a green hue. I worried about what caused that and then noticed that my yard needed edging.

My wife arrived, so I jumped in the truck and took off. She didn’t know where the event was, so we started aimlessly driving around. As we did, she got angry, which made me angry. She was angry because we were lost, and I was angry because she didn’t know where we were supposed to go. Eventually, I saw another woman. Pulling over, I asked her if she knew where the event was.

She showed me on a cell phone. She and I then discussed where I was. Her phone showed where I’d driven, depicting my path as a fat red line. I saw how I’d circled around the same area several times. I wasn’t far from my destination but unsure how to get there. I thought I needed to go one way, but the woman corrected me, showing me a quick, direct path on her phone. Meanwhile, my wife and the other two women had left the truck and were walking around. I called out to them that I knew where we needed to go. They finally came over.

Then I paused to go back to the woman that I’d shown how to use the search engine. She still wasn’t using it, so I showed her again. Then she seemed to understand. Feeling pleased that progress was being made, I got into the truck with my wife and the other two women and drove them to their destination.

Lot of women in this dream. I see all sorts of things percolating through my mind in this dream, and it’s very positive. It makes me smile.

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In the Bar

I await my turn. I am polite. Patient looking. Outside. Inside my fortress of solitude, where everything is secret, I rant at the slowness. Prozac people in a Prozac ballet, taking orders, accepting money and plastic, making drinks and change, handing out libation. It’s a thick crowd, hungering for libation, awaiting our turns under a televised baseball game.

The man beside me on the stool looks at me and frowns. I smile at him but decide not to speak. He’s drinking a beer. Looks like beer in the glass, anyway.

He says, “It must be hard to a woman. Learn to walk in heels. Find bras that fit you. Have guys stare at you.”

I’m dumbfounded into silence.

He says, “Fitting a bra is difficult. Men don’t need to learn how clothes fit them, not like bras. Men don’t wear bras.”

I’m about to counter him but I don’t want to speak. Speaking will encourage him.

He says, “I guess some men do, men who are going through a transgender thing, becoming a woman, I guess they need to learn how to walk in heels and fit a bra, if they get boobs. I suppose they get boobs. That’s part of being a woman, right? They also need to wear pantyhose, I guess, which I think is revolting, encasing yourself, like you’re a sausage. Remember that Seinfeld episode when George’s father and Kramer create the mansiere? Man, that was funny.”

He takes a drink of his beer. The bartender looks at me and raises his chin and his eyebrows, expressing to me without words, you’re next, what do you want?

I order a beer. IPA.

The man beside me says, “What was I saying?”

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Word Count

He was mentioned as not being very talkative, but I found him loquacious. I mentioned the disparity to him.

“Well.” He shrugged. “I don’t talk much around my wife and family, or her friends.”

He turned his beer bottle by its neck. “I read a 2014 study about the number of words men and women use in a day. They always used to say that women talk more than men, but this study showed that men and women speak the same amount on average, about sixteen thousand words a day. Most of us filter it out. I talk more at work than at home because they filter more of my words out at home.”

“How do you do that? I mean, how do you figure something like that out?”

“Well, it’s all rough. There are a lot of factors. I set up a spreadsheet to figure out the average. I can show you on my phone.”

“Ummm….”

“Okay.” He laughed. “No problem. I understand. I’ll give you the executive summary for an average day, quote, unquote.

“I work nine hours a day. Monday through Friday, of course, with holidays off, all that. With commuting, I’m gone about eleven hours a day. I sleep about seven. That’s eighteen hours. So I’m awake and at home about six hours a day.

“Since I’m awake about seventeen hours a day, I decided that I average about nine hundred forty words an hour. I decided to call it a thousand. So I spoke about six thousand words a day at home. I figured that they hear about half of what I say. Three thousand words. They pay attention to about fifteen hundred. So, I’ve reduced what I speak at home to about a thousand words.”

“You speak a thousand words in six hours?”

“Yep.”

“But don’t the same rates hold? If you’re saying a thousand words, aren’t they hearing just half of those, and so on?”

“Oh, no.” He grinned. “Now, because I don’t talk much at home, they pay more attention to when I do.”

“That’s all pretty cynical, isn’t it?”

“Cynical? Or honest?” His grin turned rueful and his gaze turned inward. “Truthfully, I think they still pay attention to about half of what I say at home, if I’m honest. I think I’d rather be talking more and ignored, but I see them tune me out when I open my mouth.”

Shrugging, he lifted his beer bottle toward his mouth. “It is what it is.”

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The Story Left Behind

I’d been watching him because of his motionless manner of waiting. Dressed in jeans and a long sleeved gingham shirt, he stood straight, feet apart, clutching his box. Others fiddled, fidgeted, looked around, and shifted. Some checked phones. Besides that, the other eight people in the post office line were women. He and I were the only men.

He looked about my age, and had short grey hair, but I didn’t know him. Equal parts of bewilderment and resignation seemed poured into the man.

“Next,” the clerk said.

The man walked up to the counter and put his large box onto it. The box didn’t seem to weigh much.  As the clerk slid the box onto the scale, the man said in a loud voice, “There are eleven items in this box. Nine of them are glass bottles or jars. There are jams and jellies, pancake syrup, blueberry infused balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. All of those can break. I think the only things that can’t break are the Branson Chocolates and the pancake mix. It’s a thank you gift for my brother. We stayed at his house last week. My wife picked everything out. She said he’d like them. I guess I believe her.”

The postal clerk said, “Is there any alcohol, flammable materials, lithium batteries, or hazardous materials?”

“No.”

“Do you want it insured?”

“Yes, I was told to insure it and get a tracking number.”

“How much do you want to insure it for?”

“Fifty dollars.”

The clerk pressed buttons and applied labels. “Thirty-one ninety-five.”

The man paid.

“Have a good weekend,” the men said to each other as the postal clerk handed the other a receipt.

Nodding, the man folded the receipt, slipped it into a pocket, and walked out with equal parts of bewilderment and resignation, leaving me to wonder about the story he was leaving behind.

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