03-29-2021, 09:40 AM
The other night I sat bolt upright in bed with a yell, pushing something away. LCF checked to see that I was okay and awake, then let me go back to sleep.
It wasn't until the next day, around noon, that LCF asked me if I remembered what I'd been dreaming about. Yep, I said, even before she'd finished. "Well, then, what was it?"
I asked her not to be sending me to a therapist, then related it.
In the dream, I was just a boy again. I'd said something smart-alecky, which I sometimes did, or something that sounded smart-alecky, and unfortunately my dad was in hearing distance. He chewed me out, telling me how screwed up I was, and then he decided to teach me an important lesson. He was holding a hammer, and he was going to nick my ear with it. So he swung that hammer and he just missed -- I suppose because it isn't easy to nick someone's ear with a hammer. So then he decided to nick me in the chest with the hammer. As he swung, that's when I sat up in bed with a yell and tried to push the blow away.
Yeah, my dad was never one for subtle lessons. And he didn't tolerate any kind of silliness. You didn't ask questions either; you just did what you were told. There was no room for debate. That crippled us four kids going out into the world, because any time we encountered something we didn't agree with, we thought the only possible response was to pout, and be bitter about it. We'd have been a disaster on a debate team, because we never realized debate was possible.
Of course, Dad was a product of his own upbringing, and his lack of parenting skills were the result of his own parents' shortcomings -- in particular, his father, who never took the time to play with the kids (6 of them), and who, on the spur of the moment, abandoned the family to go seek a fortune in Texas during the oil rush. The family squeaked by on the kindness of a couple relatives, who nudged food their way so they didn't starve, until the father returned penniless months or years later. The long-suffering wife (Dad's mom) accepted him back without a word, so the story goes. Then there was Dad's younger brother who was hit by a drunk driver on the edge of their yard, and though the doctors said he wouldn't survive, he did, but wheelchair bound for life, and I think it fell to my dad to take care of him, and entertain him, and later on make us kids play with him (helping him shoot baskets from the wheelchair, retrieving the ball for him).
Anyway, I do have a whole lot more respect for my dad than I used to, because he had a hard life, in what I related, and in other things I didn't.. But man, he could be a cold mean son-of-a-something.
I've told LCF I want to upgrade my bedside weapon from a staff to a hammer within reach on the nightstand, just so I stand a chance of defending myself in my sleep. But she's threatening to move out on the sofa.
It wasn't until the next day, around noon, that LCF asked me if I remembered what I'd been dreaming about. Yep, I said, even before she'd finished. "Well, then, what was it?"
I asked her not to be sending me to a therapist, then related it.
In the dream, I was just a boy again. I'd said something smart-alecky, which I sometimes did, or something that sounded smart-alecky, and unfortunately my dad was in hearing distance. He chewed me out, telling me how screwed up I was, and then he decided to teach me an important lesson. He was holding a hammer, and he was going to nick my ear with it. So he swung that hammer and he just missed -- I suppose because it isn't easy to nick someone's ear with a hammer. So then he decided to nick me in the chest with the hammer. As he swung, that's when I sat up in bed with a yell and tried to push the blow away.
Yeah, my dad was never one for subtle lessons. And he didn't tolerate any kind of silliness. You didn't ask questions either; you just did what you were told. There was no room for debate. That crippled us four kids going out into the world, because any time we encountered something we didn't agree with, we thought the only possible response was to pout, and be bitter about it. We'd have been a disaster on a debate team, because we never realized debate was possible.
Of course, Dad was a product of his own upbringing, and his lack of parenting skills were the result of his own parents' shortcomings -- in particular, his father, who never took the time to play with the kids (6 of them), and who, on the spur of the moment, abandoned the family to go seek a fortune in Texas during the oil rush. The family squeaked by on the kindness of a couple relatives, who nudged food their way so they didn't starve, until the father returned penniless months or years later. The long-suffering wife (Dad's mom) accepted him back without a word, so the story goes. Then there was Dad's younger brother who was hit by a drunk driver on the edge of their yard, and though the doctors said he wouldn't survive, he did, but wheelchair bound for life, and I think it fell to my dad to take care of him, and entertain him, and later on make us kids play with him (helping him shoot baskets from the wheelchair, retrieving the ball for him).
Anyway, I do have a whole lot more respect for my dad than I used to, because he had a hard life, in what I related, and in other things I didn't.. But man, he could be a cold mean son-of-a-something.
I've told LCF I want to upgrade my bedside weapon from a staff to a hammer within reach on the nightstand, just so I stand a chance of defending myself in my sleep. But she's threatening to move out on the sofa.