Appositio (ap-po-sit’-i-o): Addition of an adjacent, coordinate, explanatory or descriptive element.
I was crazy as a loon—loony. You know, seeing things. Hearing things. Doing things—things that put me out of play in the story of life. That’s right “The Story of Life,” a board game from the 1950s. You were born and died over the course of the game. When you were “born” you got a lead cube-shaped playing piece. The object of the game was to be the first to die to “shuffle off this mortal coil.”
Suddenly, I had a vibrating monkey on my head. I was pushed down by a polar bear. I was lost in the fog from an Ozzie concert fog machine. I was driving on the wrong side of the rode. This was reality. Imps singing the “Star Spangled Banner” backward while gargling apple cider. It was a kaleidoscope consisting of hair curlers rotating, making snowflake patterns in my head. Then I noticed I was whining like begging dog wearing a glow-in-the-dark flea collar with my name (Bitsy) emblazoned on it in rhinestones. I turned into stinkbug.
I woke up.
I was sweating, my pillowcase was wet. The dreams were killing me. I needed coherence in my life—sanity, orderliness, predictability. My dreams took me in the opposite direction.—into two-bit hallucinatory junkets into the politics of lunacy. I needed some kind of therapy. I googled “dream therapy” and found a Dr. Hypnosis who specialized in “helping people with their dreams.” Just what I needed, if I could erase the dreams, my waking life would not be disrupted by their bizarre stylings.
He told me to “become my dreams” when I was awake, and they would “dissipate.”
The next night, among other things, I dreamed I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener. The next day I went to the Halloween Store, a store selling costumes year round. I purchased a hot dog costume. I went home and put it on and ventured off to work.
I was given a 2-month leave of absence when I was sent personnel by my boss.
POSTSCRIPT
Since I’ve been on leave, the dreams have abated. I am living life unplagued by irrational, crazy images and experiences. I’m thinking about buying a little dog and naming it “Bitsy.”
