At my school, lunch is really laid back. Students all nonchalantly get in line at any point (i.e., anywhere in front of me), without so much as a hello. It’s cool, though, man; I don’t really mind spending 20 minutes of my lunch break standing in line.
Just a few days ago, while flipping through my psychology textbook, looking for funny captions to pictures (“This woman will probably use trial and error to figure out which key is the correct one”), I stumbled upon something awesome. It’s just a picture, but of something I had never expected to see in a textbook. Just look:
(Page 146, if you’ve got the book)
So what’s so amazing about this? Well, the cartoon this child(?) is watching just happens to be The Legend of Zelda. Indeed, a television series that lasted only four months, churned out 13 episodes, and had a terrible introduction. I have little doubt that this appearance wasn’t an accident, especially in a textbook published in 1998, nine years after the horrible show was canceled.
If anyone’s willing to scour Youtube for that delightful dungeon scene, please do. I’d be interested in finding out which episode it’s in.
Today I was able to take a ferry across the bay between New Jersey and Delaware. It was one of the only times I’ve ever ridden on such a huge ship before, and I still feel like I’m rocking back and forth.
During the trip, we saw a school of dolphins swimming not too far from the ferry. How often do you get to see a sight like that? ANSWER: If you’re me, not very often.
The best part of the trip–even with dolphins in mind–was when my mom plucked a grey hair from the back of my head. It’s been a while since I’ve been so excited. I had her search for more, and there are at least three or four more back there. I had just until recently pictured myself as balding before my hair had a chance to change color–luck’s on my side, though.
I can’t help but wonder what’s caused these few silver hairs to sprout. Stress isn’t an issue for me, so maybe it’s some traumatic war experience my mind’s managed to keep cached.
I like Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and that type of synthesized 80s music (not enough to buy any of that kind of music, but bear with me). The problem is, I’ve never been able to really find any radio station that plays that genre. So, imagine my surprise when, while flipping through the stations, I hear the background from a Duran Duran (?) song.
Imagine my surprise when it ended up being Rhianna’s song SOS.
Skip ahead a few weeks to my High School’s weight room. The radio is blasting present-day hits, and then, without warning, I hear the tune to ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!. It is a serendipitous moment, broken almost immediately by the vocalist singing, “Time goes by so slowly.”
It is not ABBA. The “Material Girl” has perverted something new, this time with her song Hung Up. Granted, it’s catchy, but why steal a tune from ABBA?
The next scenario is a stake dance. I have just listened to Guns and Roses’ hilarious rendition of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Later on in the queue came a song with the following lyrics:
Take a look at my girlfriend
Shes the only one I got
Not much of a girlfriend
Never seem to get a lot
“This is Supertramp!” I exclaim, pumping my fist. But, before I could even start thinking about how I could possibly dance to Supertramp, the song continued, in a very rap-esque way:
It’s been some time since we last spoke
This is gonna sound like a bad joke
But momma I fell in love again
It’s safe to say I have a new girlfriend
Nope, this isn’t Supertramp with Breakfast in America, this is Gym Class Heroes with Cupid’s Chokehold.
Why? WHY!?
Apparently this thing happens a lot–and has been happening for a long time. It really bothers me, to expect to hear one great song and have it end up being something completely different.
The other day, while reading part of a treatise by James E. Talmage, I came across the hyphenated word “ante-meridian”. This word stuck with me for a while, and I ran it through my head a couple times. I later made the connection with the acronym AM, finally understanding what it meant: Meridian, being the middle (noon), and ante, being before! A somewhat rudimentary revelation, but nonetheless neat to experience.
A couple of days later, I had two related dreams, each on a separate night. The first occurred on the day I had seen the Pixar film Ratatouille; naturally, the dream’s setting was a restaurant.
In the dream I found myself talking to a waitress, possibly giving her my order, asking her out on a date, or telling her about my dog’s cyst. It really doesn’t matter. Something peculiar happened next: my language slipped from English into Spanish. Realizing what I had done, I reverted to English and asked, “Do you speak Spanish?” She replied affirmatively, and we continued our discourse in a Spanish tongue.
So, you know, nothing special.
The next one was a little different:
I was in the outskirts of an old Mexican town. From my position atop a bolder I witnessed a firing squad standing ready to execute a row of helpless victims. A few of the victims managed to run up and attack their captors, and then everything got crazy. Banditos were firing guns at screaming civilians and everyone was running to and fro. In short, I found myself in the midst of the sort of chaos Pancho Villa would have reveled in.
As I was hiding in the crevice of a rock, someone approached me, and I began parsing English sentences into Spanish. Once again, I have no idea what I was telling them, but I do remember an adverbial phrase I used: antes de.
I woke up almost immediately afterwards. After a short review of my dream, I made a connection very similar to the one mentioned above: antes de and ante-meridian were related!
This may seem trivial, but to someone who has had a lot of trouble remembering the difference between “before” and “after” in Spanish, it hit with a lot of force. (For the record, antes de means “before”, and despues de means “after”.)
I have always heard that a lot of times our dreams work as mechanisms to solve problems found in the waking life. It was not until this set of dreams, however, that I was able to grasp what was really meant by this.
For an interesting read on the creative problem solving that dreams allow, the APA has published an article titled Dream On.
