Uneasy Sleeper
OK, doc, so I had this dream last night and it was a damned maddening dream, too. I was hanging out at Charlottesville High School for a band boosters/D-P staff meeting—let’s not even look into the Freudian aspects of that—and when I walked out of the Martin Luther King Jr. Performing Arts Center doors, I walked straight into a footrace. Naturally, being one of arthritic feet thanks to years of competitive running, I joined in for a short distance.
As we ran through the parking lot, I realized I was jogging in my fuzzy, red L.L. Bean house slippers that are great for warmth, but not all that good for impact absorbtion. So I thought I’d just jog by the house and pick up my running shoes. The race however, didn’t go that way.
As we went along, I stopped at Pic-N-Pay and bought a $10 pair of Manchuria-made joggers and put them on and then wound up on a country road with a bunch of people who all looked like me but had more hair and odd voices and very strange behaviors. One apparently was my best friend and the other a guy I could barely stand. We stopped by a Harley-Davidson dealer so I could buy some new running shoes being as the Manchurian ones were falling apart. The Harley shoes, however, were heavy, expensive and not any better than the ones I was wearing.
And then I discovered that my best friend had left. He was running again. The guy I could barely stand laughed at me and said ‘what do you expect. You win the race, you get a new car. You got played, son. He played you so he could beat you. That’s life, sucka.” I tried to convince myself that, being as my best friend’s car was a piece of crap, he was justified in the ruse, but it made me mad. So, with my piece of crap shoes and hurting feet, I ran harder and faster to catch up.
Next thing I know, I’m running through the halls at Martha Jefferson Hospital while they’re tearing it apart from the inside to ship it all to the new Pantops location. But as hard as I run and the harder I try to go fast—pumping legs and arms the way I did in college and high school—the slower motion I made. I felt like I was jogging through a runner’s motel: They jog in but they don’t jog out. As I made the turn to go through the surgery department, my daughter’s alarm clock rang and woke me up, leaving me feeling old, out of shape, betrayed and somehow very far behind.
What’s it mean, doc?
Posted by Bryan McKenzie at 07:35 AM. Filed under: Knee-deep in Thought •
