Dream A Little Dream

I’ve had this recurring dream for nearly 50 years. No, it’s not about the class I forgot about in college or the test I didn’t study for, or the paper I didn’t write. I read once where a huge percentage of college graduates have dreams along that line, though. The writer opined that we have such dreams in times of stress and they comfort us by beckoning to when we prevailed against great obstacles.

 I don’t know if dreams mean anything or not. Carl Jung thought they did. But gee, his patients, according to his records, dreamed of things like entering a dark and magic forest and seeing a portal through which the dreamer entered a majestic oak, where he encountered wisps of the spirit world.

Hell, I wonder what he would have thought when I told him about the dream of going to the Saturday matinee at the old Community Theater in Pine Bluff with Al Capone and Sandra Dee? Hmm.

But this recurring dream is different. I dream that, at some point, I’ve promised the United State Navy that they could have be back for four more years anytime they chose under some agreement or other. I think it has to do with fast ships and harm's way. I guess you could call the dream a sort of “Military Mephistopheles Metaphor.”

I had the dream last night, and guess what? Yep. They called and told this aged, decrepit, pitiful, unable, unready, and unwilling old man he was due back for military service. Yes, I’m aware of the hyperbole, but it’s nothing compared to the whining I did the first time.

Perhaps the dream has something to do with the fact that, by all accounts, the military is scraping the bottom of the barrel with its all-volunteer effort. It does this while planning to invade two, maybe three, more sovereign nations on the whimsical orders of a leader who never served and doesn’t read. This political party-head does listen to some ultra-weirdos who formed their opinions of history and foreign policy in the 7^th grade and have never seen fit to change them. “Invade someone, for Christ’s sake,” they are telling him.

It will be the most disastrous event, in my opinion, since Operation Barbarossa commenced, but who am I to say?

A brief bit of inductive reasoning: I heard recently about a new trooper recruited into the military. It was a 32 year-old female with two kids. Think they won’t try to come after me?

Or you?

Or your kids?

Or your grand kids?

Back to the dream. I was on the bus headed back to boot camp with an odd assortment of fellow recruits. Years ago, the dream would have included ending back overseas wondering when my first watch would commence. I left that one years ago, though. I suppose there have been too many wars since then, Anyway, I woke up from the dream and rolled over before the bus reached San Diego.

When I started dreaming again, I was somewhere else and it was cold, real cold.

Oh, never mind.
I'll serve again.