Dreamland

I have always been a curios person. Wondering how things work has consumed many a day in my life. I loved letting my mind wander to great and glorious adventures with my newly created inventions that often saved mankind from the brink of another disaster. It’s hard work being a super smart, super strong, amazingly attractive, super hero! Every once in a while my mother rudely burst that bubble telling me that I was living in a dream world, which, by the way, I loathed hearing. But she, in her infinite wisdom was right, as moms often are and I was clueless as to where that mindset would lead me. Throughout my life I have had a difficult time moving between those two realities and that has caused a fair amount of pain for me and those around me.

On occasion, when I was very young, my two brothers and I would get invited down to my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bill’s house near Toledo, Ohio. My aunt always seemed happy and excited when we would come down greeting us with big juicy kisses on the cheek. She would let us play in there very big house that had a really cool barn out in the back with gigantic horses. There property, allowed the horses room to run, bordered up to the Maumee River where we boys discovered hours of fun along it banks.

My Uncle Bill was a cool guy he was paralyzed in World War Two and confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. I guess it was caused by shrapnel that had somehow pierced his spine. However his handicap did not keep him from enjoying life. He would drive his specially equipped Cadillac convertible at high speeds over small hills to give us boys the feeling that we were going to be thrown from the vehicle, grabbing our stomachs that had filled with butterflies, giggling and thanking God for gravity the whole time. Uncle Bill also had a six wheeled off road vehicle that could instantly turn a complete circle and go effortlessly from land to water. We had great times chasing his horses in that buggy. My Aunt, as it turns out, was a thrill seeker in her own right, because one of the reasons that we would go to Ohio was to experience the thrill of Cedar Point, which I am still hooked on to this day.

As we gathered around the table for dinner on one of our exciting visits to their house I distinctly remember easing into one of my dream modes during adult conversation. I started wondering if my Uncle Bill was faking it. Maybe the entire time he had been back from the war riding around in a wheel chair he was really just pretending. Hey, I was six or seven and I had no clue as to what that would actually mean. In my dream world, I saw people congratulating me for exposing the faker and helping their lives. I could be the hero, again!

So my plan was not to speak out against the man, but instead I would just test him. So around the table we all gathered, my parents, my brothers, Aunt Kathy, Uncle Bill and me. I positioned myself next to Uncle Bill and was laughing along with everyone else, but secretly I was on a covert mission with worldwide implications. While I was laughing with my face, my hands under the tablecloth were secretly moving closer to his wheelchair. I had obtained a pin from somewhere in the house and when the moment was ripe I reached over and stuck him in the leg. I have to say, much to my surprise, nothing happened.

It felt really weird to poke someone with a sharp object and not have them move. I had done it to my brothers before and later in my life, I made blow darts and torpedoed them into the back of a classmate’s leg. In all of those instances they had reacted completely different. I guess he wasn’t faking after all and I wasn’t going to be saving the world from anyone. Just then a surge of panic washed over me like the air on a roller coaster. What had I done? What if I had stuck my handicapped uncle in an artery, could he bleed to death? Instantly I observed myself in handcuffs, going to jail forever, or even worse; the death penalty! I told myself to stay clam as I quickly excused myself to the bathroom and flushed the evidence down the toilet, never telling anyone what I had done. Surely I had escaped the watchful eyes of my parents and I was in the clear.

At first dreamland seems significantly easier than reality. It’s warm, comfortable and to our making. We get to be the master of our universe. We get to be in control. We get whatever we want. In our mind it is perfect. The real problem is that dreamland can be a lot of things, but it can never be real. The world that we currently occupy is a soberingly real world. Maybe, in truth, dreamland is a dangerous dimension for our mind to live in, while our body clearly occupies this reality. This is a life lesson that I have had to repeat countless times, and all the while hearing the distant chorus of my mother’s tender voice about the dangers of living in dreamland.
Over thirty five years later I would like to tell my Uncle that I am sorry, but in this real world he died about fifteen years ago. I know that He died with a real pin-pricked scar in his left leg from a little boy who spent far too much time living in dreamland.