{"id":2392,"date":"2011-12-14T18:18:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T00:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=2392"},"modified":"2011-12-14T13:25:02","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T19:25:02","slug":"peace-and-security-in-bed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2011\/12\/peace-and-security-in-bed\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace and Security in Bed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, 11 December 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Happy half-birthday to me!<\/p>\n

(Hey, if you’ve lived my life, you’d celebrate your half-birthdays, too.) Speaking of that life…<\/p>\n

Last night I had the strangest dream.<\/a> I was sitting in the back seat of a car. There were two people in the front seat: one was my friend Ryan<\/a>, and the other…well…you know how dreams are…I couldn’t quite identify the person. Like Ryan and I, the third passenger was another ex-Jehovah’s Witness male, in his 30s, and supremely intelligent. I think Ryan was driving but, again, you know how dreams are – the driver switched identities a few times.<\/p>\n

The anonymous guy sitting next to Ryan had his window rolled down and his arm resting on the frame. Ryan was driving extremely slow. This was appropriate, since we were on the top level of a parking ramp. The parking ramp was unfamiliar to me, but I instinctively knew that we were in downtown Rochester<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Being an former Witness, the town of Rochester brings to mind one thing: the yearly 3- (and occasionally 4-) day conventions. After 20 years of driving down to Rochester and staying in a downtown hotel for four or five days while I and my fellow Witnesses devoured the town like locusts…well, it’s gotten into my psyche.<\/p>\n

Anyway, as Ryan is driving slowly across the parking ramp, a pair of Witnesses (a man and a weaker vessel<\/a>) walked by, and the man leaned into the open window and asked, “Do you guys know what time it is?<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Ryan responded with the witty retort: “It’s later than you think!” I’m not gonna bother explaining this (unless someone specifically asks), but to an ex-Witness, this is positively hilarious. I instantly joined in with Ryan’s joviality, leaned forward and shouted out to the Witnesses, “They just declared peace and security!”<\/p>\n

Ha!<\/p>\n

Again, if you know Witness culture (you sad, sad, sap), then you know this is quite funny.<\/p>\n

But here’s the real kicker: I said that line – “They just declared peace and security!” – out loud. Yeah, my real self, lying in bed here in St. Paul, said that aloud at four in the morning.<\/p>\n

Or did I?<\/p>\n

My vocalization caused me to wake up. I was half laughing at how funny my unconscious self is and half worried that I woke up my wife and now she thinks I’m a dork. Maybe I didn’t say anything aloud, thought I. Or maybe it just came out as a bunch of mumbling.<\/p>\n

But, no. As my wife confirmed several hours later, I did indeed speak out loud and clear. She thought I was having a nightmare, and that she’d have to rouse me out of my sleep from a disturbing slumber. Instead, she heard me laugh, as well, and concluded that I was having a grand old time in my quasi-conscious state. Or, to put it another way, she feared I was dreaming that it was the end of the world as we know it, but it turned out I felt fine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, damn…I even think of funny things to say in my dreams. Also, damn…I am a supreme nerd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, 11 December 2011 Happy half-birthday to me! (Hey, if you’ve lived my life, you’d celebrate your half-birthdays, too.) Speaking of that life… Last night I had the strangest dream. I was sitting in the back seat of a car. There were two people in the front seat: one was my friend Ryan, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2396,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions\/2396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}