Musings on Dreams

What makes a dreamer? One thinks of dreamers as people who care little about mundane realities, choosing instead to fabricate entire worlds of their own, worlds that they are hard-pressed to make others understand. Those on the outside tend to think that dreams are wispy, transient things rendered meaningless by the merciless rules of reality. For me, at least, the truth is this: dreams are an intrinsic part of oneself, such that one can’t fully experience the world without them.

In elementary school, I rode the short bus. I watched, detached, as the aide fastened my wheelchair into the special space, making the usual cheerful chitchat. They managed to trap me quite completely; no wonder I had an irrational fear of abandonment. If the aides left me there, there was no way in hell I’d get off that bus until they saw fit to come back. Perhaps my daydreaming habit started as a response to the stifled boredom of those rides. The driver would make more random chitchat after the aides sat down in the back, and I simply stared at the back of her head, trying to produce the appropriate noncommittal responses. Riveting, I know. There was nothing for me to do in reality. I just sat there and watched things.

Ironically, my dreams began firmly rooted in reality. I kicked a soccer ball into the goal just like my friend Moe, over and over again my head. I danced around because I was happy, over and over again in my head. I saw a statue of a duck dressed in a raincoat beside someone’s front steps, and it came to life before my eyes. In my imagination, I could do anything I wanted, have anything I wished. When I say “have,” I don’t mean material things. I have plenty of that to compensate, courtesy of my doting father who lives twenty minutes away and sent me a check for my nineteenth birthday. By then, of course, I’d moved far beyond kicking balls into nets, though I still danced about, over and over again in my head. Invading the worlds of movies and electronic entertainment is enough for now, though contentment may not last forever. Already my fantasies have merged too much with wishes for realities: a job, a car, having a family of my own someday.  One day these desires might become far too intrusive. In any case, I have to end this now. The bus is pulling up to the school; I have to go . . . but I’ll be back after it’s over. I always come back.