Prone to Failure

If you ever want to surprise a friend don't tell me about it. When planning that perfect surprise birthday party for your spouse or roommate I'm happy to be just as surprised as they are when the moment comes. I have ruined or near ruined too many surprises to be comfortable thinking about. It's not that I want to or like to give away surprises. I'm not trying to steal the attention of a moment and I don't get weird highs from destroying someone else's efforts.

I just end up saying something I'm not supposed to. I mix up who's supposed to know and who is not. I refer to something that inadvertantly begins a stream of thought in that one who is to be surprised which leads them straight to the truth. I am also known to mess up secret announcements. If you're going to move and don't want everyone to know yet, keep me in the "everyone" group. Don't worry, I'm fine with not being privy to inside information no matter how close you consider me. I promise I won't be hurt or offended if I'm the last to know you're moving to Australia. As long as I didn't mess up any secret announcements or ruin someone's surprise trust that I am completely fine.

In high school a friend of mine had a dream one night that he was literally trying to keep a cat from clawing its way out of a bag. He had to continue holding the bag while pulling up the falling, ripped flaps. The bag became harder and harder to hold together and its ability to contain the cat was quickly diminishing. He woke up before the cat escaped, but he couldn't help asking himself the question the next day, "what 'cat' am I trying to not let out?" I've learned one thing from his dream and I'll impart it to you and you can then help me not fail. Cats cannot be bound by bags.

Perhaps some have other methods of keeping these "cats" pent up. Maybe you have some metaphorical 2x4 you can periodically smack the cat within the bag with taking some of the fight out of it. Perhaps your bag is made of thick leather. Maybe your cat is just calm and content to remain in the bag until properly released. Whatever your surprise concealing method is you're safe to assume I don't possess it. My bag is paper, plastic at best and the cat has claws and does not want to be in the bag. Of course, this is beginning to sound like I can't help but give surprises away, which is not the case at all. I want to keep your surprise party and/or announcement secret as much as you want me to. I think it's more that I just end up leaving my bag laying somewhere, in the room, unattended, and the cat kinda just walks out.

It's hard for me to live day to day keeping surprises all in line and properly organized, shielded from the right people and freely offered to and amended by those who've clearance to them. What I know is what I know. To clear something up, it's not that I can't keep knowledge safe or that I can't keep important tidbits about close friends to myself. I'm speaking of surprises. Parties and events that will be known to everyone soon but not at the moment. Things that are ultimately good, but better when known by the right people at the right times. I am that right person. Of course, in writing this I make a hypocrite of myself because I recently organized a surprise party for my wife in which I needed to trust all my close friends to keep a secret from her. I'm not sure at this time if there's another in our midst that struggles with the same surprise inability I do. In the case there is another in my circle of friends, much like offering your recovering alcoholic friend a drink, I recently asked them to do something they may have not been able to handle. However, it's not that I don't like surprises or find them immoral, it's just that I'm not good at them, so I'm best left out.

The Nightmare

Always a similar nightmare. I'm a child, somewhere between 7 and 12, and I walk out the back door of the house I grew up in in Ohio. I look toward the field that extends from the back yard. At the end of this field is a woods where I spent countless hours as a child. However, this time when I look past the field to the back woods something has changed. The woods have come undone in a way, parts are still there, a few clumps of trees, but spread throughout the area are houses. A cookie-cutter development with equally cookie-cutter houses now sits where that beautiful woods used to be. I writhe in anger, sadness and disappointment. I am powerless to do anything about it, I was powerless to stop the development of the land and there is nothing that can be done to restore it.

I have been having this dream all my life. Even to the present time I will have a dream like this at least once a year. The dream varies every time. Sometimes the development has completely wiped the trees away and I look on from far off, other times I walk up to the tree line and everything looks normal until I enter the woods and upon doing so I am met with houses and yards instead of the thick of the woods. In some variations I see the construction and clearing take place, in others it's already complete. But it's all the same theme.

To this day I fear that area's development. My family would never buy the land, even if it were offered to us and I do not see myself settling in that area anyways. I sometimes fantasize that the owners will some day donate the land as a preserve, rendering it untouchable and sealed, forever safe. I suppose until that happens I'll continue to have this same dream. If and when the day does finally come when the nightmare becomes reality I think I'll be found with disappointed tears. I will be heartbroken.

People that grew up moving a lot maintain that they have no roots and no nostalgia connected to place or land. Others simply are not fond of where they grew up even if it is all they know. Sometimes I wish I didn't feel such a connection to the place and the land where I grew up. Damn it that where I grew up is so prone to change. There are parts of me that are now looking, silently, for another piece of land. Some space to breath and move, a hint of where I grew up, quiet, dark at night and away from the hustle and bustle.