A FIVE YEAR EDUCATION

An Essay provided by:
Lonnie D. Story

I recently had a dream. It was quite unusual for me. First of all, most my dreams come at night while I am asleep. However, this dream, although at night, wasn’t the solemn ground of deep silence and repose. This dream came in short but in great length in a vision of sorts and short in time but long in impact. Thankfully, it was in a waking moment because it has always been a constant in my life that my nights are spent in dreams that are quite horrid. Plain and simply, I usually have one to three nightmares per night. It is a part of my life that I have come to accept. I know why, I know how and it isn’t worth discussing here. This is for a different reason and purpose. Why I have a “curse” of nightly nightmares is for God to explain to me when my last night turns to a day of eternal light. In the interim, I have learned take no ill from them, they are common in place and out of time.

This dream is a unique dream for all the reasons above and then some. This was a flight of fancy and fanciful thought in a ponderous mood far removed in soul from body. A conversation of sorts most unusual. An enlightening moment and one that only the mind can play party to and believe to be worth investigation. But I will share it with you and you decide what you can redeem, claim or repute from this simplistic scenario of mental dances in the moment of unknowns in a time framed by the world as we know it now, no matter our age.

The dream is one of a conversation, simply put. In this dream, I, I alone stood in a dark surrounding in a city-type environment. Where I haven’t a clue. It could have been the city streets of New York where I had been in October last, Daytona Beach, Florida where daily pass. It could have been Pasadena, California, one of my favorite places on the west coast or Magnolia Street in Macon, Georgia. Maybe even Belgium, Wisconsin where I will be in a week or so. The only thing I know is this vision, this dream and this conversation and what it meant and what is left to discover. I believe the later is far greater than the former.

I bent to the lad and felt as though I were still far to over-pressing and daunting to impress the harmlessness of my closeness. My only desire was to “connect.” I wanted this connection that is so very rare and one that I have had in times past and treasured like a black pearl in my back pocket worth more than a year’s wages and only known to me but oh so carefully guarded with a sweated hand and fervent, frantic mind and darting eyes. Eyes scouring the horizon for any intrusion that might even possibly or conceivably be a threat to the intrusted precious in my possession.

As I leaned in, I knew I should kneel down and bend to bow for this conversation. This was one of those moments when we get put “in our place” by wisdom so simple and so “upside the head” that we take weeks to decipher it and a lifetime to puzzle it.

“Hey there little buddy” I started as I knelt on the sidewalk face-to-face with this impressionable young man, all of maybe some five or six years of age. I bent my body backward as far as I could and at the same time, I extended by right hand forward in a gentlemanly and manly manner full of strength, honor and trust. Our hands grasped and we did the 1,2 and 3 shake. Enough to say “let’s talk.”

“So what’s your name partner?” I asked. “I’m Jonathan” came the answer. “But everybody calls me “Jons.” He finished. “Well, Jons, it a pleasure to meet you.” I replied. It didn’t take us long to get directly into our impacting dialogue. It didn’t take long for me to understand that “Jons” was a very enlightened, innocent and yet, very perceptive child.

After the usual Q&A on my part mostly about the “what do you want to be when you grow up” stuff, we actually drifted into a genuine conversation and much to my delight, surprise and humiliation. Jons knew more than I gave him credit for, even at his tender/tough age of five or six. Jons knew a few things and then some. He actually put me in a retrospect parachute on an inverted plain. He had me spinning my mind wheels faster than an intoxicated ride at the county fair. Jons had something that I had long lost. A simple view of things.