The Amazing Race
Please don’t tell me your dreams. It’s not just that they bore me, they anesthetize me. I’ll be out before you explain, “It’s me in the dream, but not really me, you know?” I do understand that, for many, dreams are informative, revelatory and profound. But after 12 years of Jungian dream therapy gone awry, I just can’t listen to them anymore. I’m ridiculously happy ignoring even my own dreams. See? It’s not personal.
So, it was shocking when I awoke with a dream that I not only remembered but, horrors, wanted to share with someone. Dear reader, that means you. Don’t worry, I’ll pay it forward. For everyone who reads this, I’ll listen to an equal amount of my husband’s dreams. I didn’t say I had to be awake, right?
My dream was no big shakes. Nothing epic about it. In it, my brother, Roger, tries to convince me to go on 'The Amazing Race' with him. If you’re not familiar with this reality TV show that boasts 36 seasons, let me fill you in. Pairs race around the globe performing unexpected challenges like bungee jumping into the Corinth Canal or riding a yak in Mongolia. Yes, sometimes the competitions are less thrilling, like pushing fish heads on spikes or eating four pounds of meat or running in your underwear.
In real life, there is no way Roger would want to go on this show, with me or without me. We have this in common. I’m so sure about this, I’d rather listen to your dreams than go on 'The Amazing Race.'
In the nightmare, uh, I mean, dream, I beseech my brother, “On what planet do you think we’d want to do this?” I go red in embarrassment as I imagine the possibility of the show filming both of us crying while one pushes the other down the world’s longest waterslide in Dubai. (If you’re an 'Amazing Race' fan, you’ll know the reference.)
Granted, my brother would be fairly good in many of the challenges. I’d like to guess he could put away a solid amount of meat and do fairly well in the underwear running department, though I wouldn’t want to be there to see it. But then I looked closer at the details. The underpants running happens in freezing Siberia and the meat challenge wasn’t just a pile of hamburgers. It was an Argentine feast featuring cow intestines and various glands.
Emphatically, my brother and I do not enjoy surprise challenges. We have zero interest in jumping off a dam or into a boat filled with 500 live crabs, let alone milking a camel. That’s not how we roll.
Instead, Roger and I prefer the known, the calm, the predictability of life. Truth is, it’s a remedy to our painful past. Besides, I could make the case that the two of us have already run a sad version of 'The Amazing Race' growing up. One that happened live in our childhood home, where there were enough challenges, precariousness and fear to last both of our lifetimes.
Of course, as children, we weren’t asked to perform death defying feats. Or were we? In an abusive home, you’re forced to play a continual risky game of survival. Sure, you could dream about racing around the world, but that wasn’t an option. Instead, our reality competition was only at home where we endeavored to stay as safe as possible. Day after day. After day.
Oh, how I wish Roger and I could have gone on the real 'Amazing Race' instead. After all, it offered something we never had a chance at growing up - the possibility of a win. That, and we’d be a team. The two of us. Finally able to forge the innate sibling bond we were denied as kids. The one we’ve had to paste together ever since. Imagine that. From the start, I could have Roger’s back. And he’d have mine.
IN MUSING by Carole Vasta Folley
has won awards from
The Vermont Press Association,
The New England Newspaper & Press Association,
and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.