Sometimes I have the strangest dreams then spend too much
time in the morning trying to figure out where they came from and what they
mean. Today I had an opportunity to sleep in for the first time all week but at
7:00 a dream pushed me awake. It involved a young woman in a skirt so short you
could see her pubic hair and bare bottom as she flitted around with a
bound to her steps that made her pleaded miniskirt flair up in front
of Don and myself. (No Brazilian wax job for that girl. Apparently I dream in the grooming
styles of decades gone by when the only one who would see your pubic area was your
future husband.) I tried to will myself back to sleep so I could figure out
what the little trollop was up to, but I couldn’t.
Just before going to bed last night I was watching a rerun
of Saturday Night Live with Lady GaGa
singing, “Do what you want, what you want with my body.” She was covered with a
silver jumpsuit and blouse--- nothing sexy about it---but as she sang she was
feeling herself up and by the time the repetitive and boring lyrics quit coming
out of her mouth her backup dancer was also feeling her up. Then she laid down
on the floor and they simulated sex as she sang the final line---you guessed it, another, “Do what you want with my body.”
I fell asleep trying to figure out when (and if) I’ve become a
prude over the years and if I have why has society come to accept violence in
movies and the nightly news but sex in the media is still trying to push the shock
value envelope. The pundits on cable news talk so freely about how we should
bomb this place, and challenge that country’s leader and “kill them before they
kill us.” They talk and we listen as if what they're talking about all happens in a movie where the blood isn’t real and the bullets don’t hurt. Guess they've never read General William T. Sherman words: “War is
cruelty, and you cannot refine it…War is Hell.” Now, war is on little and big
screens everywhere---fact, fiction and in games---and we don’t seem to care. Yet we see a singer not only
pushing the sex-in-music envelope but trying to set it on fire and we get all indigent and
worry about the future of the world.
Where are the mother’s marches against war? Wouldn’t that be
a better cause than trying to keep sex education out of the schools? Maybe what
we need is more (not less) sex in the media, in video games and on the nightly news---less time to prompt aggression. Brad and Angelina had sex on the balcony of
their New Orleans home last night. It was too dark to get a video but here's
the audio. I worry that we’ve programed a whole generation of people who have
no empathy for the suffering of others. I must add a disclaimer here: I do know
that a Society can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can simultaneously care
about baby seals, violence and sex in the media and whether or not the lids on
our canning jars have sealed properly. Heck, we can even worry about that stuff
in our sleep in the form of girls without panties trying to tempt our husbands.
Sex and violence in the world are such heavy things to cover
on a Sunday morning. You would never guess that yesterday I spent the afternoon
getting to know and hold the newest member of my family…a great-great nephew
born a week ago. His great-grandmother and great aunt were present, too, and
the concept of from the cradle to the grave was flitting through my head. What
will the future be like for that little boy in the world we're making up as we go? But on that idyllic afternoon all I saw was a
young mother completely relaxed and surrounded by a family totally emerged in
baby bliss mode. I saw a little boy who already knows love. I saw him get
introduced to his four-legged sister who is full grown but smaller than him. I laughed as his newly minted grandmother, assisted by his great aunt (my two nieces),
learned how to change a diaper for the first time in decades. It was a matriarchal gathering that probably hasn't changed much since time began.
I can’t control my nighttime dreams but I can control my day-dreams. And yesterday was a special day that deserves a Sunday day-dream of a world with cotton candy rainbows, Snoopy-dog happy dances, and family love that will continue growing in size and depth. Day-dream along with me.... what do you wish for? I'm going to sound like Sandra Bullock in Miss. Congeniality when I say: "I really do want world peace." ©
I can’t control my nighttime dreams but I can control my day-dreams. And yesterday was a special day that deserves a Sunday day-dream of a world with cotton candy rainbows, Snoopy-dog happy dances, and family love that will continue growing in size and depth. Day-dream along with me.... what do you wish for? I'm going to sound like Sandra Bullock in Miss. Congeniality when I say: "I really do want world peace." ©
