I Have Weird Dreams: The One with the Naked Jitterbugging

No… I haven’t really started sleeping. I’m still dancing with insomnia, and becoming increasing worried about my sleep schedule as the new semester looms. I’ve had this post in my mind for weeks. Several of them, actually… but…but…

How do I post about dreams when I’m not sleeping? It didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem fair. But it’s been five days and it’s the best I can give you.

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I have a confession. As much as I’ve complained about television lately, I don’t hate it. I have a TV that I regularly use and, in fact, there are some shows that I quite like.

One of these shows is Friends.

I was never into Friends when it was on the air. It isn’t really my kind of show. I lean more towards crime and medical dramas than I do towards sitcoms. But I got sucked into the reruns, and eventually came to appreciate the show’s humor. I like Chandler. He’s my kind of guy.

I tell you all of this, not because I want you to know me better… I really do think that if you knew me better, you’d run for the hills, screaming, quicker than a rattlesnake… but because I’ve been having the weirdest dreams lately. I know. My logic is completely clear here, right? You can totally see where I’m going. Television sitcoms = weird dreams squared. Glad we have that settled.

Kidding. Since you aren’t likely telepathic (and if you are, you’re DEFINITELY screaming in the hills. Or in the screaming hills. Whatever. Darn modifiers.), I doubt that you follow my logic for this.

When I was thinking about my dreams, and how I might share them, I sat down to write them out, and the titles for them popped into my head – in the style of Friends. I wasn’t sure what Friends had to do with weird dreams either, or why I felt so compelled to title them in this way, until I realized that what I was writing out could very well be an episode of any sitcom. That, in fact sitcom scenarios might as well be weird dreams.

Just think of it this way. A chef, a scientist, a computer programmer, a singing masseuse, and an actor are all sitting in a coffee shop, when a woman wearing a wedding gown runs in and announces that she doesn’t want to marry the orthodontist! Later, she hyperventilates into a paper bag while the masseuse sings songs from The Sound of Music at her – all of this after having an argument about being a shoe with her father, while the actor, computer programmer, chef, masseuse, and scientist watch Spanish soap operas. Then they all cut her library card in half and she becomes a waitress.

Okay. I know. There’s more to it than that. But seriously, could that not be a weird dream? Would you not wake up from that saying, at the very least, “uh….. right….” And the funny thing is that the above scenario – the pilot episode of Friends – was one of the more reasonable episodes of the show. By the time the monkey, duck, and chicken got involved, we’d entered a whole new realm of bizarre.

And so, on the coattails of one of the best-loved sitcoms of all time, I bring to you a scenario of my own. The first of several. I only ask that you not judge my subconscious too harshly, as I don’t have a great deal of control over it. After all, it’s dark in my head and some of the other voices don’t like me very much. I find it best to leave some parts of my brain alone. Kind of like the area east of I-35 in Austin. You just don’t wanna go there.

It started in a very girly fashion. There was to be a school dance, and I couldn’t decide quite what to wear. This was complicated slightly by the fact that my bedroom was upstairs at the ballroom.

I ended up wearing something – it’s of little consequence. I didn’t stay in it for very long. I was meant to meet my friend Eric downstairs for this dance, which was all well and good, except his parents were downstairs in the next room and he wanted to spend time with this. Naturally, this upset me. As did the fact that what I was wearing was clearly not appropriate to meet Eric’s parents.

(This is really quite hysterical, considering that I once housed a desperate crush on Eric – who is about as likely to want to date me as he is to want to date Cooper.)

The charming young man in the orange shirt is my Eric. As to why we're all pointing weapons at him - well... that's a story for another day.

Now clearly, the thing to do when one can’t decide what to wear is to wear nothing at all. At least, that must have been my thought process. I’m not completely sure, in retrospect, how I went from wearing dance clothes to being naked – only that I was rather self-conscious about the whole ordeal. That, at least, must show that I have a little sense. I hid behind columns as I tried to get to Eric. Considering what was to come, I’m not sure why I bothered.

When Eric and I finally managed to get together – something accomplished by, I believe, him gifting his parents with a television set and a potato (this made perfect sense at the time) – we set out to the dance. To get to it, we had to first walk through a room (a hallway really). Unfortunately, the room was littered with hundreds of snack-sized bags of Lays potato chips. I wonder now if they didn’t have something to do with his parents and the potato, but I can only speculate as to how his parents would have taken a single potato and had it processed into hundreds of mini-bags of chips in the span of five minutes. Or why. Perhaps they didn’t approve of me. I was, after all, quite naked.

Eric, by the way, was completely oblivious to this fact. That’s my Eric.

Either way, it was essential that we dodge the bags of potato chips on the floor. They weren’t to be stepped upon. It’s bad, you know, to step on snack-sized bags of potato chips while you go to a dance.

We finally made it into the room with the dancing. My subconscious had rather a good time with this room, I’m afraid. It merged the last school dance I actually attended (which was in the 6th grade, in 2000) and my years of Cotillion. What this resulted in was a ballroom – complete with Clue-esque chandeliers and candlesticks attached to the walls – that was completely and utterly blue, thanks to the tacky lighting and disco ball. And the strobes. Can’t forget the strobes.

We proceeded to dance (something that, in real life, neither of us do particularly well) to the obvious choice of music for such an environment – 40s Swing.

Of course!

Glenn Miller would have totally had strobe lights and disco balls in all of his shows, if only he’d known such things were possible. I’m sure of it. Glenn and I, we’re tight. *nods*

Consequently, in this universe, Eric and I were expert jitterbuggers. Which would be really cool. Except that in this universe, the jitterbug looked much more like tango. But whatever. We were good at it! And it might have been better that way anyhow. I’m not even sure that using Dream Physics, Eric would be able to lift me over his head in any way that wouldn’t result in a horrible, painful crash to the floor.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t want to crash to the floor while doing jitterbug that looks like a tango, especially if you’ve already made it through the potato chip bag land mine room and your date doesn’t realize you’re naked.

Yep. Crashing to the floor would simply ruin the whole thing.

Luckily, there was no crashing to be had. By the time I woke up, Eric and I had done several rounds of the tango/jitterbug and we were quite pleased with ourselves.

In the real world, I promptly went to facebook, where I scolded him furiously for allowing me to dance naked while his parents watched. A real friend would never do such a thing, I told him.

He suggested that I was, quite possibly, insane.

Quite possibly, he is right.

*Bobs

Tags: dancing, Friends, jitterbug, potato chip bags, sitcom recap, weird dreams