A FREUDIAN Hair And The Field Goal Kicker's SLIP

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Dreams have always been a kind of specialty of mine. Since early childhood, I have been dreaming wildly and vividly (with dreamless stretches from time to time). I also seem to have a knack for interpreting my dreams. Whether or not my interpretations are valid or just the result of a pretty good imagination is open to debate, although I know without a doubt that I have received answers to life issues while in the dream state. (I once even had a dream that interpreted for me the dream I’d had the previous night!) And “Lucid Dreaming” is not something completely unexperienced by me.

The Bible tells us that God can speak to us in our dreams (for example, see Genesis chapter 41), although certainly not all dreams are messages from God (see the 23rd chapter of Jeremiah). But with this in mind, from 1995 through mid-2001, I kept a Dream Journal in which I recorded my dreams and interpretations (when I felt I had one that fit). On the first page of my notebook, I typed, “My Biggest Dream: To become so wealthy that I can afford to get drunk in an airport bar.” Of course, today, I would settle for just being able to afford to fill my gas tank. Anyway, I had a doozie of a dream last night and it went like this . . .

My Pa (who passed away in 1996), my brother Napoleon, and someone else (my sister, I believe), and I drove to a (unknown) friend’s house to watch Super Bowl XLIII, which was between the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings. Obviously, this Super Bowl match-up would be impossible since both teams are in the same Conference (and even in the same Division within that Conference). In the dream, I was rooting for the Minnesota Vikings and I was absolutely sure that they would win the game.

In reality, I wear a neatly cropped goatee, and in the dream, I went into the bathroom and tried to use a toenail clipper to trim one hair in my goatee that seemed just a tad longer than the rest. But when I attempted to cut off the end of this one hair, it actually pulled the hair out further from my chin, thus lengthening it instead. I tried again with the same result. Over and over again I attempted to cut this hair with the toenail clipper and each time it pulled the hair out yet further until the hair was now at least a foot long, probably longer. I started to panic, fearing that I might actually pull my guts out with this hair. Finally, with one great effort, employing all of my strength, I managed to clip the hair off. I then went back to watching the Super Bowl.

Late in the game, with the score tied 7 to 7, the Bears brought out their field goal unit. A real big deal was made of this because it was to be the first time in history that a woman would play in an NFL game. You see, the Bears field goal kicker was Carol Burnett. Uh… yeah, THAT Carol Burnett.

It was a very short kick and Carol managed to knock the football through the uprights, but instead of receiving three points for the field goal, the Bears were given only two points. I’m not sure why one point was deducted from the usual amount; maybe it had something to do with the shortness of the kick, or the fact that Carol Burnett is a woman, or maybe because she recently died. (Oh, wait, that was Harvey Korman who died, wasn’t it?) Well, easy kick, a death in the family, or a glass ceiling in the NFL, for whatever reason, the Bears got just two points and the score was now Bears 9, Vikings 7.

With very little time left in the game, the Vikings drove down the field, and then with only seconds remaining on the clock, they completed a short pass in the end zone to win the game 13 to 9.

Leaving our host’s house after the game, we had to walk across a big empty field in order to get to my brother’s car. And when we climbed into Napoleon’s big, old, four-door sedan, we discovered that it had rained and the floorboards were massive pools of water, but we just plunged our feet into the ponds and Napoleon headed the car for home. On the way, my Pa mentioned that he had been impressed by the good behavior of the Chicago Bears’ fans. (If you didn’t already know this was a dream, my Pa’s remark would surely have given it away!)

Getting out of the car at home, I mentioned to my brother that if Super Bowl XLIII had been reality instead of a dream, I would have been rooting for the Bears and not the Vikings. (This, by the way, is a bald-faced LIE! Although I do not like the Minnesota Vikings, I would, under all circumstances - excepting when they had Randy Moss - root for them over the Chicago Bears.)

Believe it or not, I do understand where a couple of the elements from this patchwork quilt of a dream came from: Yesterday, I was wearing my Super Bowl XLII baseball cap (it was a Christmas gift from a friend who gave it to me because the game was played here in Phoenix). And while I was in a fast food burrito joint yesterday for lunch, a teenage boy came in wearing a Cleveland Browns T-shirt. (Yeah, I know! I thought the same thing: “The Browns?! I didn’t know anybody outside of Cleveland supported the Browns!”) But this got me to thinking about how I don’t really mind the Browns and would root for them over a majority of other teams in the NFL. I was also thinking about The Dawg Pound – a section in Cleveland’s stadium where the fans bark like dogs at the opposing team’s players. So, I get the dream’s football association.

If it was indeed my sister who joined us boys to watch the game on television, this would seem to mimic what occurred on the field of play, where Carol Burnett was the sole woman surrounded by men.

But I don’t think there’s much else to be made of this dream and I’m not going to give it any more consideration. I mean, as Sigmund Freud supposedly said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And sometimes a really long hair is just a really long hair, and sometimes a woman’s leg is only worth two points. I’m inclined to think that this dream had less to do with what was going on in my subconscious and more to do with what was going on in my stomach: maybe it was that pint of Ben & Jerry’s “Vermonty Python” ice cream I ate shortly before going to bed last night. At any rate, I’m not going to attempt to analyze this dream further, but just take comfort in the fact that Da Vikings beat Da Bears.

Hmmm… I just now noticed that I need to clip my toenails. Seriously! I’m sitting here at this computer barefooted. Ha! Life is too funny!

~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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