Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Vertically challenged
I’m not hung up about my height, but my subconscious is. Right now, my subconscious is sobbing with laughter at my expense.
In the dream, I’m young, twentyish, and there’s no wife, no girlfriend, nada. I’m in the market, metaphorically speaking. Literally speaking, I’m in some kind of casino. I run into a woman whom I knew from med school — she was my second-year resident in General Surgery. Not a beautiful woman but not homely, either. But she’s big, big-boned big, zaftig-big, six-inches-taller-than-me-big. And is she ever happy to see me.
Soon, the sexual innuendo between us is thick as fog, so silly and graphic that I’m glad no one else is within earshot of our conversation. I can’t be misreading these cues. It’s not possible. She wants me.
We’re talking about camping and she can’t believe I haven’t hiked the local trails. Below the surface, it seems to me she’s speaking in code: she can’t believe I’ve never had sex under the open, star-filled sky.
“Any time,” I tell her.
“How about right now?”
Oh, yeah. I haven’t misread this one. But there is still one problem.
“I don’t have a sleeping bag. I don’t have any gear at all!”
“Don’t worry,” she says, “I have extra.”
I follow her out of the casino, skipping with joy, goofy I’m-gonna-get-some grin plastered on my face. On the way out, I recognize a nurse I know from the hospital, a 5′-0″ firecracker who could probably kick my ass halfway down to Eureka (she wins weight lifting competitions). She’s at a poker table. We exchange a glance. I know that she knows that I just got lucky. Or am about to.
(Thanks to Kate and her family for the apropos frog pic.)
We walk to my zaftig gal’s house. She lives less than a block from the casino. Her parents are home, so she makes me wait outside. I remember something: I’ve been eating a sandwich with onions.
“Grab some toothbrushes and toothpaste,” I call after her.
“I only have one toothbrush!”
“We’ll share,” I say, thinking, hell, we’re about to share a lot more than that.
Then, while she’s scrambling around her house gathering camping supplies, this guy shows up with an enormous backpack slung over his shoulder:
“Hiya,” he says, holding out an enormous hand for me to shake.
“Let me guess. You’re her boyfriend.”
He nods, grins sheepishly.
“And you’re coming with us?”
He nods again.
So it’s a sandwich she has in mind. And I’m the gherkin.
I storm back to the casino. My nurse friend looks up from her poker game, throws me a quizzical expression.
“World’s fastest relationship,” I tell her.
And then I woke up.
D.
PS: My subconscious really did throw 7′ 5″ Yao Ming into the dream. I did not simply pick the tallest guy I could think of for maximal comic effect.
My subconscious did.
Sounds like you subconscious was trying to tell you that you may get getting too big for your own britches, as my Nanny used to say. Nothing like a smack down on the self-esteem before the alarm even goes off. Could’ve been worse…I’m not sure hop but come on, be positive! It could have been worse somehow.
Hey, my wee one has hand, foot and mouth disease (but it’s not a disease it’s a virus, that’s misleading – someone should do that, I’m writing to NCID); do you come across that much in your practice? I’d never heard of it before moving to the UK and everyone keeps thinking she’s got some horrible cow disease…but you know it’s not the same. Does it have a different name in the USA?
Here’s hoping your week brightens up and you’ve got the bad bits out of the way already!
Hey, how tall are you, anyways?
If I hang for an hour from a horizontal bar with fifty kilo weights attached to each foot, I’m 5′ 6″. Don’t know what that is in metric.
I suspect I may be closer to 5′ 5″. I haven’t measured my height in a long time.
You realize, don’t you, that asking a short guy his height is like asking a plump gal her weight? But I forgive you 😉
As for hand, foot, and mouth disease, the primary care/family practice docs see that, but I rarely do. I don’t know much about it.
Well, I’m a plump girl, so I’ll give in and say I’m 210 lbs…is that fair?
Doug, it’s okay.
We short people will take over the world someday. ’cause we are small and we’re sneaky. 😉
Lyvvie, we call it HFMD here too. And I don’t think it’s cows that get it, but pigs. Okay, that doesn’t help you very much.
I’m astonished your dreams have a beginning, middle and end. You’re a writer even when you’re asleep.
You’re still taller than I am, Doug – even if we go with the 5’5″.
[ignoring the main topic] Hey Livvy, my kids got that hoof and mouth disease–all three of them and I think one had it twice even? Coxsackie virus.
Oh, now I remember that one of my kids had it so badly he couldn’t eat without pain and he couldn’t use his hands –and forget sleep.
We gave him Ibuprofen and popsicles. I think we also gave him some kind of prescription medicine too.
OH! I have about fifty popsicles in the freezer…totally forgot – I’m a numpty! she’ll love them….*scamper*
I was married to someone the same tallness as me … I towered over his (Japanese) family 🙂
Some are tall, some are short — it’s what’s in the heart that counts. Bushie’s taller but he sure ain’t as nice, as smart or as talented.
You’re taller than both my brother and me. We’ll try not to feel bad about it.
This is, by the way, one thing to recommend south Texas. Here in Germany, I’m really short. In San Antonio, I’m above-average height for a woman, especially when I wear heels. It’s lovely. 🙂
I’ll bet you’re 100 pounds lighter than the average San Antonian woman, too!
Heh. Maybe not 100. My weight is deceptive. Nobody ever guesses it right. I could make a fortune at those guess-your-weight booths if it weren’t so humiliating.
[…] Funny dream last night. Not ha-ha funny like this one or this one. Strange funny. […]