Father brushed more of last night’s confetti from his head, and said, “We found out that five thousand years ago there were sane, intelligent people already talking about This Thing and calling it: ‘Being asleep; living in a dream’ and you started to jump up and down, hollering: ‘Yes, yes, yes! That’s it! That is Exactly what it is,’ and then the book said that there was a way to wake up from that sleep, and then I could hardly control you. You were so excited, and we commenced to try and follow the method described to awaken.”
“Ahhhh, what glorious days they were,” (and the lad vigorously nodded). “Glorious and yet frustrating beyond an ordinary man’s comprehension. The diagnosis of our condition was plain enough and clearly correct, and the method to change the condition was simple enough, and yet nothing seemed to go right. For every half second of success you had, there was ninety six hours of failure; and no matter how many bursts of extraordinary understanding you had, your life in general remained unchanged. It was as though we were sure we were sitting on a treasure chest, but could not get off and stay off of the lid long enough to fully partake of the pleasures inside,” (more rapid nods from the kid).
“After some time spent in this confounding private activity, we decided to seek outside assistance, you remember that don’t you?” (The nods kept a’comin.) “We went to hear some of the people who had written some of the books we read that first clued us in to the existence of This Thing, but you remember what happened right?” (More nods from the nipper.) “Almost within seconds did we somehow understand that they had no more achieved-The-Deed than had we, and somehow it was just obvious. Ah, I can still remember how upset you were.” (Editor’s note, son was not actually all that bothered by the discovery, but this is the father’s telling of the story and your own hearing it by the by. You’re not using one of those dinky throw-away neural receivers to pick it up, are you?)
“Yes, you were pret-tee upset, and even began to wonder if there was anyone alive who had actually experienced The Great Scratch, and understands it, (though if my recall is reliable, at that juncture I do not believe that you had begun to add, ‘understand it’ to your mental repertoire.”
J.