Dream Big Toilets
“If you really want to know, I didn’t really care about the color of the tiles or whether they’re using lamps from Philips or not. I just want to pee, and that’s it,” he said.
“So I ran the familiar hallway from my office door toward the ballroom, which surprisingly was long and winding, only to find the big red neon signal on the door-top saying ‘occupied’ instead of, well, ‘ballroom’. It even blinked constantly.
Now I have no idea of what’s going on, but deep inside me I know that it’s bathroom in there, and that’s where I’ve got to be!”
“I was an imbecile to have failed in realizing how imbecile I was, missing a number of simple stupid facts during that time. I mean, I know it was at night; it was dark, and with the spotlights following my every move, the suspense is as real as any other Alfred Hitchcock movies. So what the heck am I doing at the office that late? And wearing only pajamas? Those were simple little things I have failed to realize.”
“Don’t ask me what time; that was off the questions. And didn’t I tell you that some facts were bluntly missing from my point of view? My brain was numb, and there’s that funny tickly feelings on both of my knees that literally blocking my common sense, forcing me to move, to break-dance, to run, to run sideways, to try and jump across the hall in a flash, to get to the faraway door as swift as I could, which eventually reached, but that was one heavy door to move.”
“And damn what a big door it was. The biggest bathroom door I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I tried to gather all my strengths and push it as hard as I could, to force it open. The sign wrote ‘pull’ and I pulled it as hard as I possibly could. And it opened.”
“It opened with a bang and guessed what; it was a gate, a gate to a long narrow path slicing through the steep sides of Alpine. Pine trees are bold from the right side up, while the ascending snowy surfaces are vast, covering fractures of solid stone-grounds. There was nothing on the left side of the path. “This can’t be happening!” I screamed. “If the storm blew me off, I’ll fall!”
And I was right, this can’t be happening. I stopped, trying to feel the heavy wind in front of me with my face and nothing.”
“I slowly opened my eyes, starred at the grey ceiling for minutes, and finally decided to get my fat Doraemon pillow out of the way and wobble to the bathroom, to pee.”
That’s my friend Botak talking, he’s so skinny that if he losses another pound, he’ll disappear. Which of course doesn’t quite hit the point of what he’s talking about, it’s just some random things he said that I found somewhat interesting, among other things.
The other day he was Napoleon, dashing Marengo on top of European architecture rooftops, “leading toward the big empty, chasing the void and halted at a giant football field. The world was flat and the land was as shiny as a black tinted glass.”
“Now I knew this was just a dream, one theatrically stupid dream that usually started so well but ended up with a big flop. Napoleon, whom somehow has always been the sole qualified representative of deminunitive men’s over achievements in my mind, galloping toward a perfect stage of the world in black and white with dark reflections and mirrors; it’s a moving masterpiece!” he blabbered.
“But what beheld Napoleon’s eyes was none other than a line of bathrooms, with people lining up in front of the small white doors.
Tiny 2x3 square meter boxes with white doors could be seen standing in the horizon from a distance to eternity. About 50 people lined up in front of every door while bending their knees, making faces and buzzing like flies.”
“My steed rushed toward them as if moving on my whim, obliterating these people in a tense and careless moving of both front and back feet. They scattered, screaming and crying. I was a bandit, a samurai, a guy with samurai attire, and as the people screaming in all directions, they grew smaller while I grew taller. My horse’s feet snapped their bones, squished their flesh like oranges, and soon the field was empty, these little people have vanished and I was back to my previous form, the vertically challenged Napoleon.”
It’s a bit loopy for me how he insisted on using eerie augmentation for the word ‘short’ instead of using ‘short’ anyways.
“I woke up, and of course, started walking toward the bathroom. I got too tall and too big in the dream that even the bathroom-lines started to look like small boxes on the floor. I couldn’t even get off of my horse without the fear of broken legs or flat out head. I was in a stationary for a while before gradually gain consciousness; the dream ran out of ideas,” he ended.
Funny how dreams are, sometimes they’re awfully familiar, life-like and glamour, but most of the times, at least in Botak’s case, they got to a point where everything is too damn predictable and as he put it; boring.
He believed, and I knew that he’s not even trying to be scientific -I’m sure Freud has different and much more advance opinions about dreams that don’t even consider his mumbo jumbo blah-blah-blah useless belief worth hearing, yet who cares- that dreams pictured -graphically speaking- human-brain’s highest ability to come up with the most interesting stories, and later telling it to ourselves like movies.
It’s like saying “now this is a good imagination,” and later scorned us for not being able to think of such stories while sober.
“You know, you could either be one hell of a children story teller or a crazy poet; just write your dreams on paper,” I used to say to him. He’d stared at me like an idiot and said ‘yeah’ and ‘right’ as a word -which reminds me of a good joke about a linguistic professor who pointed out that never, ever, in any language, does a double positive form a negative.
And never did he consider these dreams serious “those just stupid dreams I dreamed when I forgot to pee before sleeping,” he once said.
Well, I thank God he finally listened to me, as twenty years latter he found a way to smoothen his language and shoot out to be one of New York Time’s bestseller authors for children’s storybooks. His latest bedtime stories collection entitled “Dream Big Toilets”, which talked about the importance of brushing one’s teeth, changing to pajamas, tidying the bed and of course peeing before sleeping, won various prizes from the prestigious Georgia Children’s Book Award to Caldecott Honor Medal.
Both Calvin and Yotsuba –my 11 year old son and 6 year old daughter- are big fans, dragging me all the way down to his autograph-session at the city’s biggest bookstore last Sunday; despite his frequent visit to the house.
But let’s talk about the present here; Botak’s coming for a snack and I bet he’s going to have lots of stupid… I mean interesting stories to tell.
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one short story from a stupid idea that I finally write ha ha ha, like I believe once believed, being rejected can be quite a trigger sometimes.. on second read the story bores me as much, but whatta hell, it was fun writing this one. ;)
