"Let me tell you about my dreams last night." Thus was I yet once again regaled with a full accounting of Judi's most recent nocturnal exploits. After twenty-six years being married to this wonderful woman, I can pretty much predict that at least a couple of times each week I will be greeted with the above statement. There is no escaping her ardent desire to go into vivid and exhausting detail, excitingly explaining what see saw and did. Some recountings taking as much as twenty minutes to fully come to fruition, and I know better than to prematurely excuse myself before the travelogue has concluded...even if my bladder is screaming out in excruciating pain.
I've read somewhere that men dream in black and white and women in technicolor. I am sure that I occasionally dream, but it is rare that upon awakening do I remember having done so. Judi, on the other hand, appears to dream in high definition and is wired into the latest version of Dolby surround sound. Where she goes while in her dream state no Hollywood script writer could ever come close to duplicating. I am somewhat envious of her ability, as could I produce even a fraction of her escapes, my blog posts would no doubt be far more entertaining.
I suppose I should have had an inkling of her imaginative skills when she and I were on our honeymoon at Santibel Island, Florida. On one evening we decided to take an excursion to the adjoining Captiva Island in order that we might witness the renowned sunsets from that location. Driving leisurely along the two-lane highway, we were about halfway to our destination traveling through an undeveloped area that was only occasionally dotted with a residence nestled in among the dense, tropical fauna, when Judi suddenly blurted out, "Did you see that big lizard!?! Let's go back and see!" I had not, but dutifully, and admittedly with some measure of personal curiosity, I turned the car around and entered the narrow gravel road where Judi had witnessed her big lizard. "That's the biggest lizard I have ever seen in my life!," she exclaimed as I slowly inched forward until we reached an elevated portion of the roadway that crossed over one of the thousands of narrow canals that crisscross the island. I stopped the car. Off to our right we saw the big lizard. Casually swimming away from us in the middle of the canal was the biggest bull alligator I personally had ever seen in my life. The creature was so big that if provoked it could have easily ripped off the front of our automobile. "They may have big lizards in Ohio" (where Judi hails), said I, "but in Florida we call them alligators." Judi, bless her heart, was noticeably embarrassed, but we both laughed at her missed identification and commented that this would be a memory we would always enjoy. Turns out to be true.
Then there are the many times when she has fallen asleep on the couch in the evenings while I continue to watch television. There must be an internal switch that gets activated the instant she drifts off into never-never land that announces "All Aboard!" and she's off on another one of her sleep state adventures. That's all well and good until she revives to semi-conscientiousness and mingles what she is dreaming about with what she perceives to be reality on the television screen. "Are those cardboard people?," she asked one late evening while I was laughing at the antics of the guests on the Late Night Show. "What?", I asked as I turned to witness the totally perplexed look on her face. "Those are all cardboard people...and they're talking!" I did my best to try and explain the true facts of the matter, but my efforts were futile as she continued to insist, "I know what I'm seeing...and those people are cardboard people!" She actually got perturbed with me. The next morning I recounted the previous evening's dialogue. She looked as perplexed then as she had the evening before. "I guess this will be another of our favorite memories that we will laugh about in the coming years," said she. That too has turned out to be true, as there have been several repeat occasions when the cardboard people have come out of slumber to play.
And as a final example of Judi's rampant imagination (there are dozens of others), there was a time when she came home from work one winter's evening and insisted that she had seen "naked people in a storefront window." Naturally I was intrigued. "Oh really...where did you see these naked people?," I inquired. "As I was taking the office mail to the post office on Central Avenue, I drove by this warehouse, and I swear I saw a half-dozen people standing in front of the window without any clothes on!" I decided to play along... "What do you suppose they were up to?" "I have no idea, but this isn't the first time I've seen them. They're there every time I go by the place on my way to the post office." So insistent was Judi that she suggested that the next time we were by that specific location she would show me. I declared, "There's no time like the present." So, we jumped into the car and drove to the location. There was just enough light being emitted from the street lamp to barely illuminate the large plate glass on the front of the warehouse, and sure enough there was indeed six naked figures posed in the front window. I pulled the car as close as I could to get a better view and off-handedly asked, "How long do you suppose we ought to figure on sitting here before those naked people decide to do more than just stand there and look at each other?" Silence... "Well, they should looked like naked people to me!" As we drove away I said gently, "And to me too, honey. Me too."
I love this woman to pieces...for her exquisite beauty, her intelligence, her quick wit and humor, and, by all means, her innocent propensity to keep me thoroughly entertained with her childlike willingness to freely share with me her real and imagined forays into a fantasy life that enriches us both. Her only admonishment to me has been, "Don't you dare talk about any of this stuff on your blog." If nothing else, I am man of my word. Besides, I never promised her that I wouldn't.
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