Saturday morning, my wife was watching one of the seemingly infinite number of decorating/home renovations shows that channels like HGTV and TLC have made so popular. Ever since the show Trading Spaces caught on a few years back, these shows have spread like weeds, because television executives are second only to football coaches in the tendency to be copycats. The biggest gripe I have with these shows is that they have filled the head of every woman who watches them with the delusion that they are a skilled interior decorator, and the head of the men who watch with a similar delusion that they are skilled carpenters.
In the grand tradition of all things popular and trendy, there is a formula to be followed. Actual professional decorators come in and explain their ideas, delusional woman of the house pouts like a damn baby because she has “her own vision for the room”, an accord is reached, carpenter runs behind schedule, dramatic music is played as the host frets about time constraints, another miraculous last minute rush gets the room completed on time, woman homeowner cries in a nausea-inducing spectacle upon seeing the completed room.
One of the things that bugs me about these kinds of shows is that I know there must be armies of morons watching who think they’re actually not going to finish the room on time. Hey dummies, how are you not getting this? They’re building false suspense. The same things happen every week, just like the old ’70s cop show CHiPs. Throw in two high speed chases, an argument with the chief, and a shot or two of Ponch’s keister stuffed in hazardously tight pants, you’ve got yourself a show.
Ladies, moving a lamp from one corner of your living room to another corner does not make you an interior designer. Gentlemen, using a hammer to hang a picture on the wall does not make you a carpenter. You’re almost as bad as the imbeciles flocking to play Texas hold ‘em because they see it on tv and want to be part of the trend. You aren’t going to make millions playing poker, you’re just a poseur hanging out with other poseurs, wearing your sunglasses indoors, ultimately only fooling yourself. If badminton became trendy, you would decide that your calling is to spend your free time playing badminton. Figure out who you are, or is being one of the sheep who you are? I bet it is.
That leads me to another thing that I don’t get about NT’s. They all demand a happy conclusion to the movies and tv shows they watch and the books they read. If a smarmy ride off into the sunset is not provided by the writer, then the majority of NT’s automatically declare a work to be bad. When it comes to blockbuster type movies, you can bet the ending will be a happy one. The NT masses will still sit breathlessly wondering how things will end, while I’m always sitting there thinking, “No way will this movie not give these people their precious happy ending.”
As I’ve mentioned before, I was not diagnosed as being an Asperger until last year, at age 33. Since then, I have had almost complete freedom from the various repeating nightmares that had plagued me since I was a very young child. I think it illustrates how much a correct answer can set an Asperger’s mind at relative peace. All those years of knowing I had a very unusual set of problems that no one had really been able to provide an all-encompassing answer for, combined with the traumas of my father’s abuse of me, had created a poisoned dream cycle spinning around maniacally in my subconscious. It is as if the correct diagnosis provided some sort of neutralizing effect on the poison polluting my dreams.
The first nightmare I can remember having involved being chased by a bull in my grandparents’ back yard. When I was small, my grandfather had a small herd of cattle, and I was constantly warned with horror stories about the dangers of messing with the bull. It began to repeat itself, and I had that dream several times a week for probably two years.
As I grew older, and became more and more full of rage about the things my father had done to me (and to a lesser extent, my family’s enabling of them) most of my nightmares involved some cataclysmic final confrontation between me and him. Usually it would begin with my mother telling me that she had decided to remarry my father, which would send me into a panic. The next step would involve me yelling at my father for all the things he had gotten away with, not just pushing me around, but for the way he treated my mom, the way he had money to do things like fly him and his new wife to Hawaii but not to pay child support, the way his actions taught me the lesson that life is one big brawl, and so on. Usually I would scream out loud in my sleep, often to the point of scratching my larynx. Then he would clamp his hands around my throat, and I would do the same to him, and we would both strain to choke the other to death first. I can’t even imagine how many times over the years I woke up with my pillow between my hands, squeezed in an hourglass shape as I was acting out my dream.
One night, not longer after Cathy and I got married, I had a nightmare where I was exchanging punches with my father before the inevitable strangulation scene. I awoke to find myself standing beside the bed, my fist pressed into the mattress less than six inches from my wife’s head as she slept. I started saying, to no one, “Oh my God, oh my God…” Cathy, always eager to get as much sleep as possible, was humorous in her dismissal of the whole thing. She said, “Well, you didn’t hit me, so don’t worry about it.” Then she almost immediately went back to a peaceful sleep. But it shook me up terribly that I came so close to a real disaster.
When I was about twenty or so, I had a repeating nightmare that lasted over a year. It involved the house I grew up in, where all the lovely melodrama of my upbringing occured. I would be in the house by myself, in my old bedroom. I would look outside the window and see a figure wearing a long black cloak with the hood pulled over its head marching through the front yard towards the front door. I would run to the front door, somehow knowing it wasn’t locked, to try to lock it before the figure could enter the house. He would always just get there ahead of me, open the door, and beat me senseless.
It troubled me to the point I talked to a counselor about it. He asked, “Do you ever have lucid dreams where you can actually sometimes will things to happen in your dreams?” I answered that I had occassionally experienced that ability. He suggested the next time I had the dream, I pull the hood back and allow myself to know the identity of my attacker.
A couple of nights later, I had the dream. I threw back the sides of the figure’s hood even as he was strangling me, and was horrified to see my own face staring back at me with a look of malice. I came violently awake, gasping for air, choking, shaking all over. But I never had the dream again after that.
Almost immediately after being diagnosed correctly, and adjusted my medication regime to better suit my correct diagnosis, I began sleeping much better. I still have the occassional nightmare, but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. I have probably had about five or six nightmares in the past year where I was torn out of the dream cycle to find myself twisting my pillow in place of father’s neck. Prior to my diagnosis, I would have had that many in a week. My dreams have been largely detoxified just from the peace of finally understanding who I am, and why.
Tags: asperger, autism, CHiPs, dreams, hgtv, lucid dreams, night terrors, nightmares, poker, texas hold 'em, tlc, trading spaces
