Last night I dreamed I purchased a handgun, for protection from intruders entering my (dreamed) city dwelling.
The whole idea of owning a handgun has always appealed to me. Wearing it on my hip would cause people to take a second glance at me, to regard me reverently. (There’s another fantasy I have, too, usually during rather dull presentations as are occasionally mandated by my employer, of running onto the stage and tackling the speaker mid-sentence, arresting him or her for past crimes. That would really make people think twice around me.)
But reality always sets in. In my dream, having the gun was exciting until I realized the problems I’d just adopted as my own, namely that I would need to keep it in a safe place so no innocent child or troubled youth could happen upon it. And then there was always the possibility of hurting, even killing someone with the gun. While fending off an intruder may be one thing, just having a gun leaves open the possibility for committing murder, for crying out loud, and I don’t want to go there, ever. I awoke understanding the reality that guns for protection decrease protection.
Today at school, too, reality set in. A defiant boy accelerated his descent away from model studentship by refusing to work or behave and by turning in an inappropriate essay. This essay he wrote presumably with the blessing of his parents, since they had, earlier, actually discussed it with a school administrator, who had suggested to them its inappropriateness. In fact, the essay was about that very administrator, as all parties involved were well aware! The situation was quickly referred to the head principal, and the boy was sent home with a letter of warning.
I did my best to recover and put on a friendly face for the rest of my students, and felt affirmed by the principal’s determination to suspend the boy whenever possible. Later, however, I learned from my history teacher colleague (“Old Fart,” actually) that the boy’s mom had at some point “lost” a son, which may account for some of her protective spoiling of her remaining son, as tragic as it may be that her very adoration will likely lead to both his social demise and her motherly anguish.
Reality also set in some months ago when I was summoned to court by a father suing for custody of two of his six children. The father had left the mother for one of his college students and, I suppose, was getting tired of paying child support. As a teacher of one of the coveted sons, I was one of three witnesses presumably to take the stand on behalf of the father, to say what in his favor, I really had no clue.
In fact, so annoyed and angry was I at having to miss a half day of work–and, on top of that, much of an evening, while my wife at any minute would maybe go into labor–that I toyed with the idea of testifying strongly on the mother’s behalf. That would have come more easily, anyway, since she hadn’t left her family. My bitterness towards the father changed to sorrow in that courtroom, however, when I realized there could and would be no winners, ever, no victors justly triumphant. All involved were pained, villains or no.
But I cannot keep on saying “reality set in.” It could be that reality is beyond any sort of “setting in,” or at least, perhaps, it can never “set” in the way poured concrete will take a specified shape and then harden to that specific form. On my drive home today I listened to an interview with a compelling agnostic who, once a devout evangelical Christian, has now shifted his certainty to uncertainty.
Somehow either form of sureness neglects the reality of complexity.
