Dreams are odd

My dreams are so weird. I’ve blogged about it elsewhere before – the idea is most of the ones I remember usually involve gunfights, and me chasing bad guys or them chasing me.

However, despite how sports-obsessed I am, I can’t really recall having too many dreams about sports. I know there have been some, but I just don’t remember them.

Last night, though, I had one, and I’m writing it down while I still remember it…

The dream centered on a game of indoor wiffleball during 8th grade gym class.

Just a couple FYIs about gym class back at my elementary school/jr. high school:

1. All 25 to 30 or so kids in our grade, including both boys and girls, played in the same class.
2. When we played a two-team game, somehow the teacher allowed the teams to always be “the cool kids” vs. everyone else (I still don’t know how this was allowed to fly). That meant it was like 6 or 7 of the cool kids, who were generally the more athletic kids vs. somewhere around 20 kids. [I was part of "everyone else."] I think the teacher thought it evened itself out because the cool kids, despite actually winning most of the time, were outnumbered by so much. But the “everyone else” group was more than 50 percent girls. We only had one really athletic girl in our class. She was on the cool kids’ team.
3. Our gym was small, and pretty narrow.
4. Indoor wiffleball was played with these pretty heavy, dense plastic bats (way closer to being real bats than your typical wiffle bat), and a duct-tape covered wiffleball.
5. The indoor wiffleball strike zone was taped to the wall, so it was the same for everyone, regardless of height.

A lot of times my dreams will juxtapose people from different places and different times in my life; not this one. Everyone in the dream was from back in my 8th grade gym class, including the gym teacher, Mr. Gile.

The main characters were me and my best friend Rick. Somehow, the two of us were our 8th-grade selves, but we had our late-20s knowledge and all the additional sports abilities we’ve developed over time. Everyone else was pretty much just who they were back in 8th grade. The only other variable in the dream, separating it from how things really were, was that in the dream the wiffleball vents were left uncovered by its customary duct-tape coating, even though the ball was still taped up and heavier.

Rick was the captain of the “everyone else” team, since he was one of the best baseball players in our grade.

(As an aside: As a result of his baseball abilities, it’s amazing to me the cool kids never did a Yankees-style recruitment of Rick for gym class. They actually did that one time when this new kid, Justin, moved into our district. When the cool kids realized this Justin kid could throw harder than everyone else in the class, cool kids included, they had to have him on their team, especially for dodgeball).

As the captain, Rick set the lineups and determined which positions everyone would be playing. I’ve played in some graduation party softball games on Rick’s team, and that’s generally how it went there. Usually, I end up playing 3rd base in those softball games, and Rick ends up playing outfield, even though my real baseball position is outfield and his is 3rd base.

In this dreamland wiffleball game, though, Rick — with his real-time knowledge and abilities — decided he’d pitch. Why? Because the vents on the wiffleball were uncovered. Have you ever seen the nasty pitches you can throw with a wiffleball? Rick has pitched before and knows how to throw different breaking pitches, even if he doesn’t always execute them. But between this ball being succeptible to breaking crazily and being heavier, allowing him to really fire it past these kids, it was a no-brainer he’d pitch.

Myself, I ended up crammed somewhere between 3rd base, shortstop, and left field with about a bazillion of the other kids that comprised our as-ever crowded team (I think Mr. Gile always thought that our quantity in players represented a strength-in-numbers thing, but I think a lot of times it worked to our disadvantage because of how crowded it was and how difficult it was for the decent players we did have to maneuver around the hoards of unathletic girls clogging up the fields of play).

In any case, during the top half of the first inning, Rick retired Bill B. (the other best baseball player in our grade), Jamie (the cool kids’ lone girl), and Stephen M. in order on nine straight pitches, which included several pitches too fast for them to catch up to, as well as some of the nastiest breaking balls I’ve ever seen. Well, it was dream, so I guess I still technically haven’t seen curves and sliders that nasty.

When it was our turn to bat, Rick decided he’d have this kid named Chris lead off. Chris – aka “Bucky” because of his buck teeth (kids are so mean) – as Rick reasoned, could run fast, and apparently in having seen him play in little league, Rick thought Chris took a lot of pitches and could draw a walk. I have no idea if this was the case or not. More than anything, back in elementary school and jr. high, Chris’ reputation for being picked on superceded any kind of talents he may have actually had.

Chris didn’t take any pitches, swung on the first one, and crushed a blast high off one of the gym walls. By the time the cool kids could gather the ball from bouncing around, Chris had managed a triple.

Rick, who in his softball games usually has me lead off because of my speed, had me batting second because he figured with me having my real-time abilities and knowledge, I would be better at moving people over while also getting on base before he came to bat. I went along with it. In fact, after he’d set the lineup, but before Chris had gotten a triple, I asked if I should bunt if the situation allowed. Rick told me to ask Mr. Gile. Mr. Gile shrugged, as if to say “why not?”

But since Chris had gotten a triple, my plan was to just swing away.

Stephen M. was pitching for the cool kids and seemed to recognize I had some sort of real-time knowledge, but just like most people in elementary school and jr. high did back then, he — and the rest of the team — were disrespecting my athletic abilities. (There were several times the cool kids were surprised by stuff I did in gym class… you’d think they’d have caught on that I wasn’t pathetic at sports like they thought, but noooo…)

Anyway, Stephen saw that Rick had thown those crazy breaking balls, so I guess after Chris’ triple, he decided he needed to come at me with some breaking pitches. Whatever he was doing wasn’t working; his first two pitches were high and inside; they never broke into the strike zone.

After the first two pitches, he decided to throw underhand. His first pitch like that, the third overall, came in pretty straight and slow, but again way high and inside. Then he sorta threw it like a fastpitch softball player would and hit the lower inside corner with a pretty fast pitch.

With a 3-0 count, I was taking all the way, but after that came in there, I glanced at him and then looked at Mr. Gile, like “What the crap was that?” Mr. Gile, who often made these weird-sounding strike calls – they were odd exaggerations of the stereotypical loud “steee-rike!” umpire calls — looked me right in the eye, and made one of his weird strike calls.

So, with a 3-1 count, I was ready to swing at anything close. Stephen went back to throwing overhand, but fired a much faster pitch than he’d been throwing, which I fouled straight back.

Full count.

All of a sudden, I felt this pressure on me, knowing I was better than everyone in the class, but the other team was starting to heckle me, as though they believed I sucked and would strike out. My goal was then simply not to strike out, which is the worst goal to have. That’s usually when you just end up striking out.

Fortunately, I didn’t strike out. I got on top of the next pitch and sent a grounder/bouncer to the shortstop area. Chris came in to score, but I ended up having to beat out the throw to first base, which I did. I was relieved to get a hit, but pissed off that I didn’t just crush a pitch from some little kid.

I have no clue how the rest of the game went because as Rick was stepping into the box, I woke up. It was about the time I’ve been waking up recently — the time when the sun’s been beating down on the side of the house where my room is for long enough that my room ends up hot and stuffy.

I have some ideas of how this dream is applicable to evaluating my mindset about life and other things, but it’s odd these ideas would manifest themselves in an 8th grade wiffleball game where I’m pretty much me now.

The subconscious is a funny thing.

~ by joshlos on July 15, 2008.