I had a dream last night that I was flying a helicopter. Which is normally pretty fun, only at some point my level of consciousness became aware enough to register that my eyes were closed.

Here is where the hero race car driver kicked in. “Do you realize how unsafe this is? And not just for you and anyone in the car/train/plane/helicopter/boat, but for everyone on the road/track/air/river/ocean with you. Really what are you thinking? I taught you better this. I can’t believe you would act like this.” All the years of lectures kicked in a single moment and spent the next who knows how long trying to open my eyes. Only I couldn’t. As I struggled, I was occasionally able to open them, but I couldn’t actually see anything when I did. When my eyes were closed my field of vision was perfect, but in the brief moments I ‘opened’ my eyes, everything was fuzzy like the little blonde girl in front of the TV in Poltergeist.

But I could shake the hero’s training despite the reality that it obviously didn’t apply in this situation, and I continued to try to get my eyes open. I had to be safe, damn it. After much struggling I was finally able to open them and do you know what happened? Yep, I woke up. There I was eyes wide open staring at the ceiling at 7 am.

Thanks, dad. Thanks to you I can’t even be unsafe in my dreams!