012

I'm back after a long week of training and traveling. So tired that today I took a two-hour nap. Haven't had a Sunday nap quite like it in years. It came with entertainment.

I woke up this afternoon to some kid practicing the Notre Dame fight song on his trumpet. It's just as well, because my dream was one I apparently needed help getting out of, and a 12 year-old butchering a rented brass instrument works just fine.

I dreamt that I was spending time at the house of an old bishop from my church. I was there with a friend, and we were playing with his kids. And here's where it gets...well I'm not sure, you tell me. In the midst of some mild horsing around with the kids, the bishop toots. I dreamed my old bishop tooted. Now, in the dream, as is my custom even in reality, I pretend I don't hear anything and just keep playing. But of course it's not really the same. I'm pretending not to be wise, when I am wise. So it's a little strained, but I keep up appearances. After a few moments of this, the bishop says, "Did you hear that?" He starts to laugh. Then, and here's the part that is so funny to me, I proceed to start chattering endlessly and nervously, jumping immediately on top of the bishop's four little words. I am telling the bishop toot story after toot story. Every toot story in my arsenal. Stories of toots which are far worse, to my mind, than what the bishop brought just a moment ago. "Oh, that's nothing," I say. "There was this one time I was on this bus..." "My friend, this other time, she was on this date, right? And she thinks he's further away from her than he actually is..." It goes on and on. I'm doing this, I lucidly surmise, because I'm trying to ease the bishop's embarrassment, make him feel less sheepish. But the sad truth is that all I'm doing here is making myself the most exceptional brand of moron, the bodily function equivalent of forty toots to his one, because I cannot shut my trap. I even get some body language from the bishop himself alerting me to the fact that I am way over-doing it, and I need to find a sock and use it. My friend sits down and holds himself like a stone. And while I'm absorbing all this input, suddenly, off in the distance...an off-tune and halting fight song. I am stirred into full consciousness. Smarter, more rested, and with a greater insight into myself than two hours before. To which I say, Rally. Sons of Notre Dame.