She said “The Moron in Your Head.”

This morning I was telling Sally the text of a dream from last night. Dreams are funny things, no? Bits of reality strung together with ridiculous images and ideas that on reflection often make no sense at all. This one was based loosely on a problem created by the Franklin County road department when they paved the road in front of our lot. They raised the road bed quite a bit, which when added to the deep swale made the driveway a steep dip. So steep that any trailer over about 10 feet would bottom out going in or out, and longer ones would hang. The road department has yet to respond.

The dream took that premise and changed the location of the lot. Not unusual for dreams. So here I was, driving up the road that isn’t there, noticing all the road work on driveway bibs. When I get to mine, I see that the road guys cut the pavement away from the bib, removed my 10 foot gate and fence (always locked), filled the ditch to a slight taper, and built two concrete block gate posts about 15 feet into the property to be used for a new gate. No fence, no gate. And all of this seemed okay, as dreams often do, until I noticed that the “gate posts” were only 7 feet apart, not nearly enough to get any good sized boat or camper through.

Now here comes reality again. As I was telling Sally about the dream, I got to the part where I noticed the posts being 7 feet apart, and reacting as if this were a real event, I said to her “What kind of Moron would put gate posts 7 feet apart?”

And she said “The Moron in your head”. Suddenly, I went from telling about a dream to having a resident moron. And you know what? We all have one. Sometimes the moron just plays with dreams and makes up the most bizarre stuff. Conflates things not related, invents impossible tasks and solutions and creates totally unrealistic situations. Those are not problems as long as you recognize the moron at work. (And sometimes you wake yourself up when things get so strange even your sleeping brain knows things are getting really stupid.)

The real problem is when the moron in your head manifests in real life, when you make snap judgments about people or situations, or when you make stupid decisions without considering the consequences. The reality is that we all have a moron in our heads waiting to manifest. So beware, you have a moron in your head. 

Thanks to Sally for putting a name and face on mine. And you are welcome for me putting a name and face on yours.

Image: http://www.bolgernow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/caution_moron_alert.jpg