SON MIS LOCURAS

It looks like a horrific, infectious disease.  Or less horrific, but equally infectious.

I have two recurring dreams.  One has been around the greater part of my life.  The other has appeared more recently.  Any pop psychologists out there willing to attempt an explanation?

• This one has been around for over 30 years.  I have it once or twice a year and it is always the same.  I am sleeping at the base of a cliff, which has an overhang I can see far above me.  At some point while I sleep, the overhang cracks off and I sit frozen, terrified as the mass of earth crashes down on me.  I am certain I will be crushed to death, but I survive.  Moments later, I see a bird’s feather floating down toward me.  I marvel at its delicacy, then it crushes me.
• The second dream is a returning to college dream.  I’ve had it three or four times in the past few months.  The premise is always that I am returning to college after a summer break.  The year seems to change every time I have this dream (i.e., the first time I was going back after freshman year, the second time,  after sophomore year, and more recently after junior year), but in each event, I am excited to be returning to my roommates and friends.  I try to get through the courtyard’s gate.  It is the gate I remember letting me into the courtyard in my dream, but my key doesn’t work, so I run around to a different gate.  I am admitted through that gate and immediately the dream transports me to my dorm room.  There my roommates (the women who I lived with or next door to for three years) immediately include me in the moment’s conversation.  In one dream the conversation was what we’d each done for the summer.  In the other it was the middle of the assignment of rooms within our suite.

One of my favorite sayings in Spanish is “El sordo no oye pero compone.”  Translated it means “the deaf man can’t hear, but he can make it up.”  My mother uses the phrase on me whenever I believe I heard her say something because it suits my needs. 

I was reminded of the saying when I read this correction in the LA Times recently:

January 19, 2008

Campaign fundraising: A Jan. 10 article in Section A on infusions to candidates’ coffers quoted Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, a volunteer fundraiser for Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, as saying: “Calmer people raise more money.” The quote should have read, “Call more people; raise more money.”

Things I have not liked about this trip to D.C.

• I had to wait an hour for a cab from the airport to my hotel.  Airport attendants blamed the taxi shortage on traffic and the bad weather.  If there are some things I know, they are that local news channels were telling folks about the snow for days and that when it snows traffic will be bad.  What? Cabbies don’t watch the weather report or know that traffic will get bad in snow?  Cuernos.
• The Starbucks near the hotel closes at 7:30 p.m.  Really?  The business built on a model of “people will drink coffee at anytime and place” closes at 7:30?  I don’t even like coffee, but I can’t even get a chai latte to take the place of the big brownie dessert my diet won’t let me have.  Cuernos.
• Dieting as a resolution.  Makes me very cranky.  Double cuernos.

On the first day of the sixth grade, Mrs. Eschelbach, our reading teacher, handed out notecards and asked us to fill them out with basic information.  She wanted the kind of basic information teachers ask for, but rarely have occasion to use (e.g., address, phone number, gender, class schedule).   In typical classroom fashion, we handed our cards  to the student at the head of the row, and then that student handed the stack to the teacher.  It happened to be that I was in the first seat (ok, I always sat in the front seat, I was diligent), and my classmate Armando’s card was sitting on top.  I glanced at the card and noticed that he’d put an “F” where the box asked you to choose “M/F.” 

“Hey, why did you put an ‘F’ there?” I asked.

“Because I’m going to be a father when I grow up,” he answered. 

Because I was a typical 12-year-old girl, I laughed at him and knowingly explained that the question was not whether he would grow up to be a mother or a father, but whether he was male or female.  He thanked me for the info and sheepishly replaced his original answer.

I was reminded of Armando today as I looked over the student profile for a teenager applying to a program where I volunteer.   The form asked for favorite music, classes, name, address, and gender.  Under the question “M/F” this kid wrote “K.”  It wasn’t bad penmanship, or a misunderstanding of what the question asked.  It was just a “K.” 

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to ask the kid what she meant or wanted to accomplish with her letter.  Maybe she meant half way between the two (although a “K” isn’t really half way).  Maybe she meant she was okay with either.  Whatever she meant, I liked it.  It’s a dumb question anyway.