A Little Problem 2/4/10

I got 14 in today, mostly along the Indian Creek and Tomahawk Creek trails. I hadn't run east of Roe in a while, due to the weather, and the construction that had torn up that section of the trail last year. I plugged along without any problems, no dogs, no drivers, no midgets.

Oh, that reminds me of a strange dream I had last night, which later led to a very disturbing event. In the dream, I was watching a KU basketball game, and it was pretty rough, with a lot of collisions and injuries. And every time a Jayhawks player had to leave the court, he was replaced by either a midget, or a hairless boy with jowls. They weren't too bad, either, because the play-by-play announcer kept saying things like, "I don't know how Coach Self is doing it, but his team is hanging in there." The problem was that the little guys weren't very strong, so they kept getting beat up, and had to leave the game. Finally, they ran out of midget/boys, so they put in little girls in hockey uniforms. One even had goalie pads. That was the point when the surreality overwhelmed my brain, and I woke up.

I had to run for almost two hours to shake the weirdness. Then my kindly wife made lunch, after which we went to the barbershop. I was surprised when we walked in, and the place was empty. I was seated right away, and the talented Brandy set out to make me look less like a 47 year-old slob, and more like the distinguished men of business whose likenesses top ads for various barbering products found in the shop.

She was nearly finished with this Olympian feat, when a noisy band of scruffniks came in, barely supervised by their mother. Horror of horrors! They were all wearing KU replica basketball jerseys! And when they took off their stocking caps, they were nearly hairless, and the chubby little beggars were sporting jowls as well. Surely they must have been brought to the barbershop to torture me, and my "dream" hadn't been a dream after all. My miniscule mind was teetering on the brink of insanity. I jumped out of the chair, fallen hair flying from the apron, tossed 20 bucks on the register, threw my wife over my shoulder, and ran out the door.

After six hours in the bathtub with the lights off, and the gentle reassurances of my wife that the brain damage would not be entirely permanent, I'm not sure what that means anymore, I have returned to the world I thought I knew. I feel like a wall has been torn down. The wall that separated my dreams from reality. The wall that the little people could not surmount. Please keep an eye on them for me.

Thanks for humoring me.