I hate early mornings so much that I can never remember the my good dreams.  By the time I've cursed the sun for rising too soon, I've forgotten all about those dreams where I've solved the world's problems in six and a half hours of sleep.  Sorry, America, economic recovery will just have to wait until tomorrow morning.  I'll try to write it down, immediately, next time. 

Naturally - because my life works this way - I have no problem recalling the dreams I'd rather forget.  The first of these recurring dreams involves my wedding day.  There I am, in some large breath-taking Renaissance-era cathedral with ridiculous stained glass; everyone I want to be there is there, and I've already warned them to forever hold their peace(s) because I know what I'm doing; and I smell really good, too.  Just as I turn to kiss my new wife, I wake up.  Without fail, I always wake up at that moment.  So, let's summarize:  since age seventeen, I've not kissed the woman of my dreams even in my dreams, nor have I at least seen her face, yet.  This is my life.

But let's direct our attention to the other sort of dream I'd like to forget.  It's the one where I'm a father of pre-teens.  They're smart, reasonably attractive, and athletic enough not to have their heads flushed in toilets, everyday.  They even have good hair that you'd want to fondle with your unsanitized hands, even though we who have nice hair kind of hate that.  The scenario soon goes downhill when I realize that my children are bad.  Really bad.  Not bad like bringing guns to school, failing to master subject-verb agreement in writing, or enlisting in the Army just for the free tee shirt and thermos. I mean that everything they are is everything bad that I am, as if they've only inherited my bad personality traits.  I can live with me being far from perfect, because I understand that Perfection is an entity with an impregnable force field around it, just to keep me out.  I get it.  I'd like to think my children might have a better chance at it.

I suppose my subconscious fear is that because I had a bad father, I'll also be one, as if being so is genetic.  Consciously, I don't believe that, but I know that my subscious mind could beat up my conscious mind, anytime.  It would also kick it while it was down, and spit on it for good measure.  Second only to the combination of peanut butter and chocolate, my subconscious mind is the most powerful force in the known world. 

I half-jokingly blame Mom, but I'd be more correct to blame myself.  She proved that you're truly never too old to learn when she finally realized that I don't respond well to traditional methods of punishment.  She likes to say I was punishment-resistant, but in my book, I'll say that "I've been overcoming obstacles since I was a young lad."  Tomato, tomahto.  On one occasion where I did something I shouldn't have, she opted for something worse than denying me my allowance, sending me to my room, or forbidding me from taking Ms. Thing to see Aladdin on Saturday; she simply said:  "If you want to be that way, that's fine, but just hope you don't have children just like you." 

Zing!  Speaking of better punishment than taking away my Sega Genesis...  I've never forgotten that.  On days when I have the bad child dream, I'm glad that my kids will have half of someone else's DNA.  Maybe they'll have a chance not to be the downfall of society (yeah, right; it'll be too late by then).  Let them inherit my wit, my hair, and my stellar taste in watches; but they can have HER personality.  I'm ok with that.  The best thing I can do for them - and whatever is left of the entire world by then - is to choose the right woman.  NO PRESSURE. 

Oh, and I can be less-flawed.  I'm not sure which will prove to be the greater feat.

TheBigShowAtUD©

That's when I learned to make mental notes of my questions, so that I could hide out in the library and ask smart, attractive girls for answers, hoping they wouldn't laugh at me (yeah, right).

Somehow, people thought I was smart, because of the questions that I didn't ask.  They'd say "You seem so perceptive and thoughtful, like you're just taking it all in and ruminating."  Naturally, I told the truth and said "Naw, I don't even know what 'ruminating' means!  I just didn't feel like talking and being a moron, today.  You can't imagine what lunacy I considered asking earlier."  I've found that it's generally not the question, itself, that's dumb; it's either bad timing or that the inquirer makes known that s/he lacks knowledge that such a person ought to have.  It may not be a stupid question, but had you not been playing online poker in class, you'd have heard someone up front ask that question five minutes ago.  It may not be a dumb thing to ask, but a person your age ought to know that, by now. 

Common knowledge, as it were.

It's a lonely place to be when you don't know what's going on, yet everyone around you clearly does.  All you can think is "This does not seem like the opportune time to ask 'What's going on?'"  I was thirteen, in a foreign country, on an educational tour with my eighth grade English teacher and a handful classmates who were certain their mothers just wanted to be rid of them for ten days.  We were in a cemetery somewhere in France, and there was a large crowd of picture-taking men and weeping young women by a particular tombstone.  There were flowers, everywhere... and Yours Truly was clueless.

Parting the sea of people twice my size, I reached the sacred spot, and quietly asked a teary-eyed women whose grave it was.  She kindly told me before walking away, but I can still remember standing there with my patented "You must be kidding me, I still don't get it" look [see profile picture].  As much as I wanted to ask who this person was, I didn't, lest it be that I ought to have known, and would make someone within earshot think that I had failed at life.  I made a mental note to find out, one day, but I forgot.

Fast forward to ten years later.  There I was not studying for an exam.  Instead, I was uploading a new profile picture to this very site when I suddenly remembered that day in the French cemetery, and that I had forgotten to find out who that must-have-been-really-famous-guy was.  A few clicks here and there, and I had my answer: