Shark Girl Dreams Big

The other night I had a dream. A jiu jitsu dream.

Shark Girl's styling dream accommodations.

It was dark, and I was at home. In my dream, my house looked like a row house, connected to its neightbors. The front door opened up to a riverfront. At night, the riverfront was lit up and folks hung out on their stoops. It was a new house for me. As I looked out the window, I saw a tough-looking young woman accompanied by some thugs. They were swinging neighborhood cats around by their tails and when there was enough speed and the cats’ bodies looked like helicoptor blades, they tossed them into the river.

Outrage filled me. Overcome by loathing and the memory of my dear, departed cat, I burst out the front door and leaped down the steps toward this hooligan and her partners in animal cruelty.

I have to set the tone now, or I’ll be beset by this bully for as long as I live here, I thought. Not to mention she’s killing cats. What kind of a person kills cats?

As I neared, I did my best puffer fish, blowing up my tiny 4’11” stature by putting my hands on my hips, sticking my chest out and raising my neck. I can’t remember what happened next, but her posse deserted and I ended up giving her the rear naked choke.

I remember thinking, If I let her go, she’ll overpower me. But if I keep choking her, she’ll die. Curses! I’ve never practiced the sweet spot between consciousness and death before. This is a limitation of my training. And what if she fake passes out and jumps me when I let her go? Do I have to kill her?

Well, I won the day (I don’t know how), but I was too late to save all but one of the neighborhood cats, whose plump body I embraced and brought home to live with me in the sanctuary of my new, riverfront row house.

About now you’re asking, “Nyquil induced dream, Shark Girl? Or did your basement wine turn bad? Did someone slip an acid tab in your Greek yogurt?” Personally, I think it was one too many episodes of Breaking Bad. You know: generally good person gets caught up in the Underworld for, what seems to them, good reasons, but then is forced to do heinous and more heinous things. I try to decompress with 30 Rock afterward, but you see what that added to my dream. Cats and obsessive thinking. Yes, my dream was a hallucinatory cocktail of critically-acclaimed network darlings.

 

I recently read an article about the advancements of brain technology. Scientists are getting closer and closer to being able to project the thoughts and images we see in our brains. I would be able to just download my dream into a video clip and share it with you here instead of trying to remember the murky details of my valiant feline rescue attempt. Of course, the down side of this technology is that people’s thoughts would be vulnerable for harvest. It makes Facebook and Google look like your most loyal confidants.

Would I give up my mental privacy to be able to replay my dream match? It was the best (and most meaningful) match I’ve ever had (sort of). But I don’t know. I think it would compromise Shark Girl’s anonymity.