By the time I thought about taking a walk today it was already getting dark. The temperature was down to 14 degrees, two degrees lower than that last time I had checked the thermometer. I needed to hurry up and walk before it got any colder. So I layered up (really layered: two shirts, two jackets, and two pairs of pants) and bravely stepped out into the cold.
Marshall unexpectedly joined me outside. Cold doesn’t affect him the same way it does me. He deigned to wear a jacket, but halfway through our walk he declared, “I’m not cold. If anything, I’m hot!” You see, boys are not, as the saying goes, made of “snips and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails.” They are made of radioactive materials and they run on nuclear energy.
We talked as we walked. Marshall is taken with the idea of lucid dreaming, and he asked me what I’d do in my dreams if I could dream lucidly. I told him I’d go to a place where magic was real and I’d ride on the back of a dragon. When I asked him what he’d do, he said that flying was too obvious. So, first he’d go out of the house, talk to people, and tell them how much he hates beans. Then he’d fly.
Ah, Covid dreams! All anyone wants anymore is to be able to talk to other human beings without having to worry about dying from the encounter. It is a dream that would have been so much more attainable had the people of the world not allowed the virus to spread and mutate into all sorts of devilish strains. Now we have the U.K., South African, and Brazilian variants to worry about.
But Marshall doesn’t know that, or at least I don’t think he does, and I am not going to tell him. One Covid is bad enough. Four is four too many. It’s best not to know or to think about such things, and instead to dream blissfully of lucid dreaming on a chilly night.