A Psychic, Lizard Boy, And The Insignificance Of A Dead Computer

November 17th, 2007 at 06:48am Keith Hemstreet 8

This week I discovered that my three-year old daughter has a unique talent. Actually, calling it “unique” is an understatement. It’s fair to say that I know of no other toddler with this particular skill, though dredging the annals of “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” may turn up a child with similar powers.

This may be hard for some of you to believe, but it turns out my daughter is psychic. Not to the degree that she can see the future in a crystal ball, but she certainly has some kind of prophetic ability. Needless to say, I’m very proud.

So how do I know that my daughter is a visionary diva? Let me explain. The other night, as I tucked her into bed, she said she had something to tell me. I knelt down beside her, and listened.

“Daddy,” she whispered in a poltergeisty voice, “all of your dreams will come true.” How sweet, I thought, chalking it up as what happens when you allow your children to overdose on Walt Disney films. But then it happened. My dream came true.

Granted, this is not what Walt had in mind when he wrote, “a dream is a wish your heart makes.” The kind of dream I’m referring to is the bizzaro kind you have during a stretch of broken, restless sleep. The unexplainable sort. You know, a “going-to-elementary-school-in-your-underpants” type dream.

That night, maybe because I fell asleep conscious of my daughters comment, I woke around 3 AM, a recent dream still fresh in my mind. In the dream I was working at my computer in a university study hall, when I walked away for some unknown reason. Moments later, I returned to find a reptilian man with a human head seated at my desk. This muscular and scaly creature was typing away at my computer, his long tail was curled neatly behind the chair.

The gall of this guy? I thought, as I approached the lizard boy.

“Hey, dude,” I said, “that’s my computer.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” he said without looking up.

I looked over his shoulder to take a peek at what he was working on and saw a Matrix-esque code scrolling horizontally across the computer screen.

This could be bad, I thought. He could be setting coordinates for a laser attack from the cosmos. We could be disintegrated, evaporated, turned to dust. This could be it! The end of the human race! I have to do something! I have to save the world!

“Um, excuse me,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“What’s that you’re working on?”

“I’m requesting some data for a report.”

“Oh, okay. That’s cool.”

Too scared to confront this thing, I took him for his word and stepped away to let him finish what he was doing. After pecking away at a few more keys, he stood, his dragon skin shiny with some kind of goop.

“All done,” he said. “Thanks, bro.”

“No problem.”

Iguana man turned and walked away and I thought nothing of the unusual encounter. It was time to get back to work, but when I sat at my computer, I was stricken with a horror the magnitude of which, I’ve never experienced. The computer screen was black. The harddrive was not breathing. It had no pulse. The alien had taken its life. He was a murderer, a murderer of laptops. My blood ran cold.

That’s pretty much the gist of the dream. There was more to it, like running into an old babysitter who babbled on and on about her career as a quarterback for the Fighting Irish. She had sustained a knee injury, etc., etc., but that’s a lengthy subplot, so I won’t bore you with the details. What’s important is the murdering reptile and the dead computer.

You see, two days later, I woke around 5 AM, made a pot of coffee and sat at the table to work on my old reliable computer. When I pressed the power button nothing happened. I pressed it again, and again. Still nothing. Shock and disbelief descended like an anvil atop my head. I hadn’t backed up in weeks. I pressed the power button a dozen more times. No response. Anxiety tightened its grip on my sternum. I felt as though I had been run over by a dump truck and was lying in a ditch, hanging on to life by a thread.

It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I made the connection between my daughter and the computer. I immediately took her aside.

“Listen, Sweetie,” I said. “You know how you said that ‘all of my dreams will come true’? Well, you were right. I had a dream that my computer crashed and then it really happened. Can you tell me how to fix it?”

“I want some Lucky Charms, Daddy,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll get you a bowl of Lucky Charms if you tell me how to fix my computer.”

“Lucky Charms have colored marshmallows. Marshmallows are magic.”

I spent the rest of the day trying to decipher this cryptic message. Lucky Charms? Magic marshmallows? I ate a bowl with my daughter, and then another. Damn, that’s good cereal, I thought, but even the act of devouring a third bowl did my computer no good.

It isn’t until you lose use of your computer that you realize just how dependent you are on its ability to function properly. I rode out the weekend in a state of mild depression. How much writing did I lose? How many of my emails are awaiting response? Will I be able to sync all of my Quickbook files to a new computer or will I have to recreate them from scratch? How much will a new computer cost? I have deadlines. I’m screwed. Why me? Oh God, why me?

Even at church, I lamented over my desperate situation. Attempting to communicate with the higher power, I asked for the ability to grasp what is truly important and persevere with a clear head, but my youngest daughter had had enough. She kicked and squirmed and began to cry, so I carried her outside.

Across the street people had gathered near the Court House for a Veterans Day ceremony. I watched as an elderly man in a military beret hobbled across the street with a severely deformed leg. When he reached the crowd, he put his arm on the back of another man in military garb. The man turned around and they gave each other a sincere and lengthy hug. They were veterans. Men who had risked their lives to preserve the freedom of the American people, to preserve my freedom, the freedom of my wife and daughters.

And what was I doing, but moaning over problems of no significance. In light of their sacrifice, I was ashamed. My computer immediately became a non-issue. Life was suddenly stripped to the barest of elements - family, health, togetherness. Nothing else mattered.

At that, I realized that another dream had come true. I had been granted a gift. The gift I’d just wished for. Perspective.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, Family