More From the WHAT?!?! Files

It can take a lot to shock my husband. I don’t feel this is because he’s ‘seen it all and done it all,’ which can sometimes happen to a person. But I think it’s because he’s got a delightfully laid-back, bemused, and non-plussed approach to observing humanity. It takes a lot for him to give one of my favorite responses, which is a shocked, barking laugh followed by, “WHAT?!?!”

So I was excited to tell him about my dream the other night, because I felt it might elicit that very response. Normally, I keep my dreams to myself, because they can be tedious and only interesting to me. But these two were doozies: back-to-back comments on my personality, chock-full of bizarre cameo appearances.

Greg Allman was in the first one. In it, he was in love with my best friend, who was merely annoyed by his attention. I, however, was furiously jealous. And I didn’t even like Greg Allman. I was simply irritated that he picked her over me. In fact, I even recall a snippet of something I said to my friend in the dream, after I saw Greg cut some lines of coke on a piano: “Well, this is just great. You don’t even like to binge drink!”

For most of our lives, my best friend and I have had very different taste in men, which worked out quite well when it came to preserving our friendship. So the dream was a little unsettling. But my husband’s reaction was gold: the laugh, followed by, “What are you doing dreaming about a sixty year-old grandpa?”

I wish I knew, darling.

The dream then shifted and I was a contestant on The Bachelor. Again, the object of my desire was truly less than desirable: drunk, extremely sweaty, covered in ketchup and mustard stains. But when it was my turn for a date with him, I hunkered down and made out with him anyway, even though I didn’t like him or his sweaty, mustard-scented face, just so I could win.

The whole thing reeked of every frat party I’d ever attended in college, and I was relieved to wake up.

This next bit isn’t a dream, though it might be for some people. On Friday, J and I attended our community’s annual fourth of July carnival/fireworks/carnie-bonanza. Every ingredient for a good time was present: fried food on sticks, beer in commemorative glasses that changed color depending on the temperature, live music, and more crazy people than you could shake a stick at.

And I was delighted to learn that I was standing not ten feet from one of Oshkosh’s biggest celebrities: a young man who dresses as a leprechaun and wrestles under the name of “Hornswoggle” for the WWE.

As I was without my camera, I'll just have to leave you with a link to the video, which I hope elicits in you too a shocked, barking laugh followed by, "WHAT?!?!"*

*Every time I embedded the actual video in this post, I lost my comments in Explorer. I tried. Really, I did. If you know how to fix this, you are my new hero.