Daddy Don't Hit Me

September 1966

My friends,

Is there anything on earth as boring as a blogger detailing her dreams? I suppose that sitting around watching flowers grow might qualify. But my friends, I'm still shaking. I must tell you.

I've heard people talk about REAL dreams before, but I always thought they had maybe taken a little too much acid. But this was the realest, realest, dream. I was living it. I've had dreams that convinced me they were really going on, you know? Dreams where you wake up shaking. Or dreams where you are falling down steps and you jerk. This dream made me wake up screaming. IT WAS REAL.

I hestitate to tell you about it because it makes my sweet darling Daddy sound like a monster and someone is going to say AHA, she's repressing incidents from her childhood. But rest assured, we LOOKED like Ward, June, and the Beaver, and we WERE Ward, June, and two girls with beavers. I'm sorry! It just flew out of my mouth. We had a lot of stuffed animals including a singing beaver. No, I'm not kidding.

ANYWAY. Disclaimer: None of this is even close to reality. My parents were kind and gentle people who had big dreams for us, but were smart enough to let us set our own goals and the timing of them.

Here's the dream: We were living in my aunt and uncle's house in North Carolina. It was the summer before my senior year. My parents were making me attend summer school. I studied very hard and almost flunked the first session. Daddy announced that I would be going to the second session where I would be studying physics (GAG) and learning to play a new instrument. I had four weeks to pass the hardest course in the world AND learn to play a new instrument.

Reality: I took physics my senior year in high school out of love to please my father and I despised it. He never asked me to. I just wanted to make him happy and become an engineer, his dream for me. (GAG). I come from five generations of scientists. But I hated science.

Reality: Madeleine has been invited to audition for some mega-exclusive super dooper Child Genyus Summer Camp because of her violin. If she gets in, she's on the fast track to Super Genyus Artist Magnet School, 20 applicants for every position, and perhaps Super Genyus Governor's High School of the Arts, 150 applicants for every position, etc, a full scholarship to Julliard, a full professorship in music at Harvard, her own string of CDs, a concert at the Kennedy Center AND Carnegie Hall, and international fame and glory. Maybe that's where the music thing came from. Ten years ago we brought home a fourteen pound child. Ten short years ago. And she liked country music in those days.

Anyway, I wept in my dream and begged him to reconsider. "Please Daddy," I said. I can't learn a semester of physics in 4 weeks. I'll make a F! I can't learn a new instrument in four weeks either! I'll have two Fs, I won't get into college or win a scholarship (both of which did happen IRL). Please, please, Daddy, please reconsider!"

He remained cold and distant and remote. "No. You will do as I say." I was so mad I lost it completely. He was at the stove. I stood on the other side of the stove, the place that divided the kitchen from the family room, FLIPPED HIM THE BIRD, and he turned around with a look of FURY on his face. He started to run after me and I fled as fast as I could down the hall to my room, which I frantically tried to lock. It wouldn't lock! I kept twisting it back and forth, knowing I had five minutes to live (or survive after being severely beaten).

And I woke up. Screaming. I have never awakened up screaming in my life.

Wha.....?????????

All I can figure is that I'm secretly angry at my parents for "leaving" me, and that somehow that transferred into this dream where my loving, gentle father turned into a monster that I hated. It was so final. There was no appeal from his decision. There is no appeal from death and dying. Maybe my mind twisted that into this?

Anybody with any insights? Bueller? Bueller? I'm not kidding, if you have any ideas, share, please. This dream shook me to my core.