Tag: dad

Dream a Horrible Christmas Dream

meisajDaily Life

I had a weird dream of Christmas last night.  Maybe it wasn’t exactly Christmas, but Christmas shopping.

First of all it took place at a Mall.  I kinda extremely dislike malls.  Bizarre weird places that are only good for people watching (or getting angry at Apple Stores).

Anyways, I’m walking around a Mall at night, but still during business hours.  Not sure what I’m doing there, but I see a big box store.  They sell some gadget you’ve all seen sold on TV but that I can’t place right now for some reason.  It just has giant aisles and aisles full of this item.

However in the very back there is a section of the store dedicated to a new item.  It is a book read.  You put on headphones and use a telephone jack to plug the headphones into something that reads whatever book you want.

I’m mildly piqued and look around for someone to inquire about it with.  I find a tall skinny man with a pointed goatee.  He really wants to demonstrate it for me so I follow him to the front of the store.  As we get to the front all of the lights go out.  I look around and realize no one else is that with me.  It is just me and the sales clerk in the store.  When I check my watch it says 8:30 (I instinctively know that the store is open until 9).

He plugs the phone in (by telephone cord) to a small camera box he puts on a shelf.  It is directly above a book.  As he turns it on the device starts reading the book.  There are a few caveats though.  You have to manually turn the page, and as I find out, the camera section balances really delicately and is easy to shift and get out of place.

But the guy talks me into buying it.  Says he can throw in an extra so I’ll get three for the price of two (they are sold in two packs for some reason).We get to the back customer service counter (where you purchase it) and he pulls out a big circular tin, like the kind you get popcorn in.  It has big gaudy logos on it and it bright neon colored.

He tells me it will be $103.  Which is way more than I’m prepared to pay, however he goes on about how it is his first sale, how excited he is and how proud his boss will be of him.  So I give in.

I pull out my wallet, which is clearly not my wallet based on a) how much cash is in it; and b) how stuffed full and large it is.  Tons of receipts, paper, and business cards.  I count my cash but it turns out to be just shy of what is needed.  I got to pay by credit card, but at the last second I feel a little shifty about the guy, so decide I will use a check (which I happen to have with me).

I tell him I’ll pay by check.  This really confuses him but he says ok.  As soon as I pull out the check he grabs it and sends it through a machine.  I start to protest that I haven’t written anything on it and he looks more confused.  I realize he’s never seen a check in his life, that he clearly has no idea how they work or what they are for.  I try to get him to tell me the name of the store to put on the check, and he can’t tell me that (he doesn’t know the name of the store).  I go back to explaining the parts of a check slowly but he just takes my blank check and puts in the register drawer and gives a receipt.

The dream ends here, but kind of doesn’t.  I remember walking out into a dark empty parking lot with the tin under my arm, trying to figure out who the hell I could give this crappy gift to.  I think Dad came to mind.

It was cool though.  It was one of those dreams where I didn’t remember it until half an hour after I woke up.  Just sort of doing something else and it all came flooding back.

Random Life Story Number #3 or 3 Flights of Stairs and a 300 lb Foosball Table

meisajDaily Life

A few years ago (more than a few, but less than a decade), my friends and I were really into playing foosball whenever we could. We got so good we accepted random challenges at bars, and boasted about victories. So one Christmas when I saw a slate top foosball table in my aunt’s basement I got really excited. I told her, and my parents how amazing of a table it was. It was bar/restaurant quality at least.

A few months later when my parents called me up to tell me Tina (my aunt) said I could have it I got real excited. Until then we played mostly on crappy cheap tables when not out at bars. The problem existed though that it was still 6 hours away at my aunts. But it gave my parents a good excuse to come visit (it fit in the van with the seats removed). Graciously I told them to bring it out whenever, that I’d love to have, and something about them being the best parents in the world and to give my aunt my ever lasting gratitude.

They showed up a few weeks later and we started to unload it. I can’t remember who it was exactly that was there to help, Mike maybe. It could have been Rollin or Reggie also, but for some reason I think it was Mike. Regardless it was someone I considered stronger than me significantly. We (we being Mike… I’ll just say it was Mike from here on out, my father and myself) pulled it from the van. I swear the thing had to be over 200 pounds easily. Apparently large slabs of slate are not light. When my dad told me that him and my mother shoved it in the van themselves at Tina I was shocked (but it made the fact that they brought it out to Buffalo all that much more amazing).

At the time I lived in a second story apartment. It came with an unfinished attic that Mike was using as a bedroom. That was were we planned to put the foosball table. For some reason getting it up the first set of stairs was pretty easy. Mike and my father took the top and I supported the bottom. The real problem would be the narrow stairway to the attic. It would be hard to fit multiple people up the stairs at one time, and twist the foosball table up the steps and around the corner.

But we were single minded in our efforts. And again I took the bottom, Mike and my father at the top. We got about halfway up the stairs and my father and Mike decided we needed a break. The problem that arose at this point was that I was supporting the majority of the weight on the bottom, and if i set it down on the stairs I would never be able to pick it up again. With no way to set it down, and no way to prop it up on anything, I just set it on my thighs.

The break went from a few minutes to a fifteen minute break. And I stood there the whole time with the weight of the of the foosball on my thighs. Somehow it didn’t hurt, and I was able to pick it right up when we were set to get going again. And we got it up there.

The foosball table rocked. We used it for years, and then when I moved I gave it to Mike. Who still has it in his house in Buffalo. The memories from that foosball table will last forever.

The bruising that appeared instantly on my thighs lasted about a month.

More Thoughts on Mississippi

meisajDaily Life

I don’t go church.  I grew up in the Roman Catholic faith, going to church every Sunday, but I don’t go anymore, haven’t since I went to college.  Faith is a personal choice, and while I still have an inkling that there is something more to life than just what I can see and feel with my senses, I refuse to belong to any organization that needs a leader who is somehow closer to whatever is out there than me.  Take that Pope.

One of my favorite conversations I have ever had with my father happened the first year I moved to Cleveland.  My father had driven out for the night and we were at the bar talking during dinner.  He told me that people sometimes asked him if he felt bad that his children didn’t go to church (we were one of the larger more recognizable families in the church).  My dad responded with “All of my children are good people.  They have all made their own decisions and gone their own ways, but they are good people.  What more could I want.  If going to church has helped then to be good people then I can be happy about that.  But they’re good people.”

It made me happy.  And I’ve always like that my family went to church and still had its own ideas separate from ‘church doctrine.’

It scares me when bills go are put up to be voted on that people only support because of their faith.  It scares me, because it reminds me of Iran, or other middle east countries where politics and faith are crazy intertwined.  Why do your opinions and beliefs based on faith need to be forced upon others.

Anyways, I’m glad that the ‘Personhood’ initiative failed.  I’m pretty scared that the group that backed the initiative is saying they will try again, and that they are comparing the issue to slavery.

This quote on Huffington Post frames it amazingly.

“Maybe a pregnant women should get two votes, or maybe she should lose her vote and the fetus should vote, since she’s losing all her other civil rights,” she said. “Maybe we should do a mandatory sonogram of the fetus to determine if it’s Democrat or Republican? It’s all ridiculous.” ~Loretta Ross

Read the whole article here.