mechanicalbull's Blog

My parents, wife, son, and I walked into a used books store on Tuesday. It wasn't very crowded, but it was rather in dis-array with books laying in stacks waiting to be put away all around the shelves.
  
Among the people was a man sho seemed out of place in a book store. Mid fourties, tanned to the point that I suspected he slept outdoors. Unshaven for quite a few days. Hair a straggly uncombed mess of black and grey. His clothes all looked kind of shabby, maybe slept in. In place of a shirt he had on what was either a denim vest or a denim jacket with the sleeves torn off to expose his arms, which were (as noted) very tan, and defined enough that he must've selected his attire to show them off.

Adam (my three year old son) went towards him but stumbled and fell. Fell face first onto this man's old sneaker. The man barked loudly at him, "HEY! MY SHOE!" at which point Adam began to scream and cry. Reflecting about it now I think he was trying to joke and make light of the situation, but yelling as a 3 year old gets hurt didn't go well. I quickly picked up Adam and headed for the door.

This man followed me to the door where Wife met us and joined in attempting to console Adam who was crying and bleeding from his bottom lip. The man following us continuted to demand attention. I do believe he was "pretending" to be loud and angry and yell about his shoe, but only the absurdity of it revealed that it was a joke, he was very authentic in portraying an angry man following my screaming son.  Unfortunately he was loud, aggressive, pursuing us, and showing no concern for my bleeding son who he was terrifying.

"No one seems too concerned about my shoe." The man bellowed over the din while we tended to our crying child, still heading to the door and still followed by this man. I was ignoring him, Wife told him to shut up. He took offense and got louder demanding an apology. Adam amidst crying wimpered "I'm sorry. I'm sorry"  Wife said the guy was lucky she didn't punch him in the face. He had some loud aggressive-sounding response to her...I got the tone of it but over Adam's crying I didn't hear the man's exact words.

I felt like I had to keep him from his approach towards my screaming child, and I felt like Wife, having just threatened violence, had just invited an imminent violent response from this guy. And if she goes over to slap him, I KNOW he's going to hit her. It's like the scene was setting itself up.

Before she could take any action I handed Adam off to Wife and I punched the guy in the face HARD. I never before hit anything so hard as I hit this guy's face. Big dramatic right cross.  It looked like his face compressed to the side in slow motion, but there wasn't any feeling of "connecting" with anything hard, heavy, or resistant. Like there were no bones in his head at all. Then since he didn't fall down, I grabbed him by his filthy denim vest and bounced him off of the shelves back and forth all around us.

I'm not very witty when I have adrenaline going, so I think I said something ineloquent like "RaaAArrr!" while he retorted with "He's a maniac!" and "Help".

I kept him pinned to the floor basically growling incoherently an inch from his face till people came to seperate us. I don't know if they could have, but I stood up and herded my family out the door. My mother said, "I am so proud of you".

The guy was clearly neither hurt nor frightened too much, because he still followed us, this time out into the parking lot, but keeping a good distance. He made a big show of taking down our licence plate number but kept about twenty feet back from us shouting the number over and over.

Obviously I didn't sleep that night, going over in my head how I had beaten up some guy in a book store who's only real crime was to lack social grace among toddlers. He was really threatening at the time, but the more I thought about it, the more innocent that man's actions really seemed to be, and the more aggressive I seemed. Before my family arrived, he was just browsing in a book store minding his own business.  My family acted like it was a big triumph or something but I feel awful about it all. I've been dwelling on it since it happened. I feel like a complete ass. I'm so sure the world is hostile that I was pre-emptive when I could have been diplomatic.

I worked with Habitat again today, but instead of being part of the group I was in the basement doing the last of the electrical work there. I could hear everyone laughing upstairs. I don't think they were mean really, but it sounded like cruel laughter. Like laughter at someone else's expense. Then it occured to me that maybe when you're lonely and shy, all laughter sounds cruel...and suddenly for the first time that old Doors song "Strange" made perfect sense to me. I'm going to have to get that for my iPod.

My mother called me today to tell my that Shane's name was in the obituary, along with her picture. It was the one she still has up on facebook. She died this week after a short illness the paper said. I know sometimes that's code for something else, but I don't really know.

We were good friends about fifteen years ago, we drank together and laughed together and were part of a big group of pretty close-knit friends. I don't know just when or how we lost touch. Around nine months ago she commented on some story I'd writen on MySpace and we chatted a brief bit, then around six months ago I actually called her and we caught up, I had her laughing and laughing. Her picture kept coming up on that Facebook suggestion thing, where it tells you to get back in touch with someone. I was going to call sometime, but I wanted some funny story to tell her, but I just kept putting it off. It still doesn't feel real, it's like if I called RIGHT AWAY I could still catch her before she left.

Delavi posted a question a little while ago, "if your dad couldn't give you away at your wedding, who would you want to give you away?". So I started thinking about that...sounded like a hostage exchange, and as soon as that thought popped into my head a vision of the whole spy-theme wedding was crystal clear. Bridesmaids and groomsmen all armed and aiming at each other Mexican stand-off style. Groomsmen with bullet-belt bandoliers and bridesmaids with an extra derringer hidden in their garters. Traditional "here comes the bride" music as she's led in, arms tied behind her...I was thinking hooded instead of blindfolded, but probably there's a way the hood could be a veil? Yeah probably.  The groom is getting interrogated by the minister, who has a big mustache and cigar and speaks with some horrible South American accent. That's where the water boarding comes in. Minister Castro's got his cigar in the grooms face, ashe reads through the marital vows snearing at the groom, then the dunking. "Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?" DUNK! "To have and to hold?"DUNK!  "Do you?" DUNK! "DO YOU?!?" DUNK! (etc.)  till finally the groom cracks and says "I do". Not sure how it would go from there... My family would have already left by that point I think.

I did that cheek swab test yesterday to see if I'm compatable to anyone who needs a bone marrow donation. I'm concerned that donating bone marrow will be a horrific painful process performed with a cordless drill and sharpened ice cream scoop, but I'm determined to "man it out" no matter what. I've really got it in my head that I've got to save the world.

Despite numerous automated reassurances, I am becoming increasingly unconvinced that "my call is important to them and will be given the time and attention it deserves, and they will be assisting me momentarily". In fact each time I'm systematically reassured, I become less reassured.

I do find it interesting that they mix it up with different gender/ethnicities to reawaken my attention in case this "new" person is live and not memorex.

Had another dream last night. I found a house in the woods in slight disrepair but with a great feeling of comfort and security about it. Wife and son and I all moved in. Soon I realized the house was some sort of huge slow-eating carnivorous plant who's "lure" was to look like a house and exude comfort. I tried to get us all to leave but we couldn't. We were all being consumed slowly, but relaxed too. I kept it at bay as best I could by drinking whisky, which made me unpalatable. Occasionally while empowered by whisky I would make a break for it or go on the offensive, but was never successful in escaping.

It's monsterously metaphoric. It's not even a subtle metaphor, using "whisky" to symbolically represent "whisky". My brain really has got to try harder to convolute the meanings of dreams.

I saw some kid get off the high school bus today wearing some ridiculous faux fur hat with the ear flaps sticking straight out to the sides. He looked like he was dead certain he was cool, acting like he was indifferent while still being in on the joke of his headwear's absurdity. I imagine he was hyper-conscious of his hat, the way a kindergardener wearing new shoes would walk looking at their feet.

I wonder if on some ten or twenty year reunion his classmates will remember this hat or other props in particular or just have a vague sense of him being a funny clown or remembered as being cool.

I suppose how he's remembered by classmates isn't all-important. I wonder if he, like I, will look back on things like this and groan at how goofy he was.

I hope that the good self-amused feeling he has now will be the same feeling he gets when he thinks back to these days.

But last night I had two!

First one I was back at college, and for some reason naked. Yes! I had the stereotypical "naked in school" dream! I had this idea that college was so open-minded of a setting with everyone free-expressing themselves that it was okay to just show up naked. I was slightly uncomfortable, but overall it wasn't the "traumatic embarassment" dream I think it's commonly portrayed as.

Next one, I went fishing and caught a gigantic fish while Wife who was fishing longer than I didn't catch anything. I wanted to try to help her, but it's just all random anyways, how could I?

And that's about it. I may look into the naked one and see if there's supposed to be some meaning. I don't really believe dreams portend anything at all, but it might say something fun.