Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
he had a nightmare that can provide an ample supply of the willies, so vivid is its garish, fiendish quality. Actually, when Dougie was a little boy, and then when he wasn't such a little boy, he experienced many nightmares, we could say a plethora of nightmares, which means more than a very, very many. Part of this is due to his imagination, which has always been vivid and more than a little bit rampant. We might as say he has a wild imagination. Many times in dreams our mind, in its housekeeping (putting things away, locking things down so they can't be moved, shifting things this way and that so we can breathe more comfortably, filing things away in appropriate places) bumps against the things that scare us, or it tries to solve some thought that we have been worrying over, and these can be expressed in our dreaming mind as a very scary scene (and they don't always make a whole lot of sense).
Another reason Papa, when he was just a little boy, probably had a lot of nightmares is because his family loved to go to the drive-in theater (when such things existed in the far-off long ago). The family would pile into Dada's Cadillac, stop by a market and pick up candy for everyone (and Mama had already popped a bunch of popcorn, as if popcorn came in bunches the way bananas do), and the kids were in their pajamas, lugging their pillows (and in those days people did not often wear seatbelts, least of all children, and child carseats had not been invented as yet), and they would park at the drive-in and affix the drive-in speaker in Dada's window, and they would sit and watch MONSTER MOVIES. Usually about Dracula, especially ones starring Christopher Lee, or Count Yorga (although to be fair to Mama and Dada, they did not watch Yorga until 1970, and then Dougie was practically an old man of EIGHT YEARS OF AGE!), and Vincent Price was always a favorite (especially in his most ghoulish roles).Yeah. That might have something to do with the nightmares. At least a few, anyway.But this nightmare was about Grandma Larsen, who had her peculiar, um, troubling aspects, and about Donna, his big sister, who featured in many of his nightmares (as well as being the monster in many of his day-time frights).Grandma Larsen was always a bit scary. She was tall (5'9"), and very broad (although bony), and she wore her hair up tight, and usually wore thick eyeglasses even though she was blind. Her false teeth often slipped out at unexpected moments (and sometimes she forgot to put them in, which could also lend a frightening aspect). And for an old woman with a lifetime of health problems (heart problems, multiple strokes with the first in her thirties, early blindness, and many more things) she moved very fast (faster than most people, even young healthy ones). She believed in walking fast. And telling you where you went wrong (and you always went wrong).Grandma Larsen was also a health nut (the logic has always been that if she hadn't of lived so healthily, she probably would have died at an early age, so her lifestyle was pure healthy, while her genetics left something to be desired), a life-long vegetarian who believed in daily exercise, quaffing vast quantities of water, and generally just arguing with everyone about everything. But looming largest to a little boy was the fact that Grandma Larsen adored FRUIT."Try these dates," she would say, "or eat this banana." And the bananas she pushed were generally gluey and black, encircled by fruit flies -- this was not because she was blind, but because she thought RIPE fruit was the best, and that bananas weren't even tasty until they were black. All of this built a prejudice in Dougie against fruit.Grandma, despite her blindness, would peel an apple quickly with a very sharp knife (I'm not sure why, as she always ate the peels, and the core, as well as every single seed) not even looking at the apple as she peeled it (she was blind), her eyes roaming along the ceiling as if seeking a scrawled message from God.He dreamed Grandma Larsen was chasing them, Dougie and Donna, around and around in the kitchen, telling them that they must eat their daily fruit.Then Grandma Larsen caught Donna. Dougie's big sister screamed as Grandma lifted her into the air and set her down upon the kitchen counter."You MUST eat your daily fruit, now stop being a bad girl!" Grandma Larsen commanded, producing her very sharp knife.Dougie, hiding in the living room, couldn't stop watching as Grandma Larsen, deftly wielding the sharp knife, began to peel Donna's hand. This was not a bloody dream (which the many drive-in movies may have produced), but more a fruity dream, as Donna's peeled hand more and more took on the aspect of a peeled apple."Doesn't this look delicious?" Grandma Larsen crooned.Dougie screamed as Grandma Larsen finished the peeling of Donna's hand, and there protruding from Donna's wrist was a brand-new shiny white light bulb.The light bulb winked on brightly, illuminating Grandma Larsen's smiling face. All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
important - FIGHT THE FLU WITH HERBS - important
