The Misinterpretation of Dreams

Trying to fall asleep after 36hours of being awake, with just one hour of sleep in between, I wish I could dream of all the answers to my many questions:

Is there really any point to me working so hard?
How much did I actually help the people who’s lives I think I helped to save last night? Am I crazy to think that I can handle a patient with his trachea cut in two? Am I just lucky that both of the patients with stabbed necks and tracheal injuries survived on the operating table without dying last night?
What is the point of all of this?
Am I going to be alone for the rest of my life? Is what I have enough to call a life? Is this it?
Am I strong enough to die alone?
Will I ever be able to fix my relationship with my mother? Will I ever be a mother? Am I capable of being a good mother?
What is it that I really want most of all?

I wake up after 90 minutes without any answers and starving. I pour myself a double shot of Amarula and make a toasted cheese sandwich. And I decide to blog about it.

My dear friend Bridget McNulty has written what’s described as a “delightful” novel about love, called Strange Nervous Laughter, and to celebrate it’s launch in the big  US of A she has decided to name 15 May “International First Love Day.” I will not attempt to describe the novel, except to say, it’s like nothing you’ve read before. To find out more about it, check out her website: www.bridgetmcnulty.com. And you can get a bit of insight into the author by reading a piece I wrote in my little Dreaming of Greatness series: http://amandasaunders.blog.com/2008/3/.

Now let me pick my old brain about my personal experience of first love. I suppose in love, there are many firsts.
The first crush I remember having was when I was 7 years old!!! I started very early. I think I daydreamed a lot, I lived in my own world. I suppose I didn’t like the real world. I believed all of the fairytales: Cinderella, Snow White, etc. I was sure I would meet a knight in shining armour and live happily ever after. I didn’t think 7 was too young. Obviously I didn’t see myself as a mere child, I was always very serious and thought I was completely capable of being in love. I saw this boy on the school playground one day, I think he was a year younger than me. I thought he was the best looking boy around, so I went to the tuckshop and bought him a sticky pink fizzer sweet! I think I saw him once or twice after that, but I don’t really remember much else about him.

My first kiss was behind a broken down bus in the rain. We were teenagers doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing, so it  was all exciting and secretive leading up to the kiss, but when we eventually did kiss it wasn’t that great, his mouth tasted funny. I think we kissed once on another day after that and it was even worse, because all of the excitement was gone but the awkwardness was still there.

The first time I had sex was terrible. It wasn’t all about love as I had imagined it would be. It was just about physical desire. I suppose I did it, as many girls do, because I thought that if I didn’t the guy would lose interest. And of course I was curious about it. Afterwards I bled so much, I thought I was going to die. He got quite scared too, I passed out and he carried me to the shower and opened the cold water on me! I don’t remember much about the next day, but it definitely wasn’t all love and romance.

I think I’m not so comfortable commenting about love itself, because I have to admit that I’m not quite sure exactly what love is. Of course I’ve gone throught times when I thought I was in love, but at the moment I have lots of doubts about love. I don’t know if I’m capable of real love. Looking back I think that most of the time I’ve managed to mess up relationships or potential relationships. Mostly it’s by the things I say. But I think that’s part of who I am. I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, I put my foot in it all the time. I’m awkward and tactless and I don’t do well with innuendo and hints and suggestions.
I remember the best kiss I’ve ever had. It was at a birthday party and I was a bit drunk. It was an intense kiss. This particular boy, it was almost eerie, it was as if he could read my mind when he kissed me. When I pulled away from him it was just too much for me to deal with, I said something stupid to detract from the moment and the intensity of it all.
What if, like in the movies, I had said exactly the right words at that moment? Would the right music have started playing in the background at exactly the right volume? Would we have lived happily ever after?

So I took the plunge and got the new car. So much stress I tell ya!
She’s really pretty, white and goes really well. The only problem that I have with her is that I’m going at 160km/hr before I realise it. I used to get enough speeding fines with my old car, so I have to be extra careful now with my faster new car! Anyway, the one thing she does have is cruise control, so I go to about 130km/hr and switch to cruise control and take my foot off the accelerator.

The biggest stress is the amount of money that a new car costs. I just feel it’s a total waste to spend so much money on something that depreciates from the moment it leaves the showroom. And at the end of the day I know that the car salesman is coming out tops in the deal, not me! There are plenty of excuses I have to console myself about this:

1. My old car was starting to be somewhat unsafe to drive. I do a lot of driving on my own. It’s not safe for a woman to be stranded on the side of the road in the dark in South Africa, etc…. A bit lame, the stranded woman line, but hey, this is South Africa after all.
2. I was paying to fix my old car every month, so I might as well pay an installment on a new car.
3. I drove an old car for more than 3 years, while most of my peers bought brand new cars straight out of university. I deserve a new car and it’s about time I bought one.

On the South Coast of KZN, the best place to go people watching is the beach! Busy holidays are the prime time to do this, because large portions of the population of some of the northern landlocked provinces of South Africa descend onto the South Coast in a frenzy to make the most of the sea.

Worker’s Day (1 May) was the perfect day. I woke up and looked out to the sea which was a perfect blue, the wind was absolutely still and the sun was gloriously bright. I headed to the little beach in St Michael’s about 12km from my home, it’s small but quite popular. There are swimming beaches nearer to home but my efforts were definitely rewarded. On the beach was every class of South African stereotype you can imagine. I got a full three hours of undisguised people watching, interrupted only when I went for a swim.

Let me describe and label some of the colourful characters. Once I found myself a spot, got out of my clothes and got some sunscreen on, I took out my book and I got right to it.

To my right and slightly in front of me was your conservative Afrikaans family: the ‘pap en braaivleis’ variety. The mother’s face looked like she might have been in her early 30’s, but looking at her from the back you couldn’t tell. All you could see was ass!! She never moved from her spot, she was as fully dressed as you could be on the beach on a hot day without being Muslim. Her role was to keep the food coming, while her husband fished and the children played. It took her double the normal time to make a sandwich for her husband, because everytime she spread a bit of cream cheese onto the bread she had to spread an equal portion onto her tongue. She finally got some rest from all that strenuous work and sprawled across the sleeping bag and tried to read her home decor magazine “Idees” but it was just too much, she passed out.

Behind me were the two blondes. One in her early 20’s. She had EVERYTHING necessary for the beach: perfect body in a beautiful bikini, matching accessories, perfectly ironed hair, perfect posture. She never got wet.
The other ‘blonde’ was in her late 40’s and she believed she “still got it”- she wore a brightly coloured bikini and flaunted the extra padding she’d acquired around her middle region, her lipstick matched her bikini, her hair was bleached and frizzed so it could look just like it did back in the 80’s and she had quite a collection of gold on her arms, which she probably started accumulating around the time of her hairstyle.

To the right of the blondes were the young and trendy Afrikaans family, the rugby playing variety, that came complete with jetskis and Toyota Fortuner.They ran up and down the sand either with a rugby ball or to get back into the water with their boogie boards. I frequently heard phrases like: “Die water is net flipping amazing vandag!” (The water is just flipping amazing today!)

To my left were the slightly new age English family. The 3 year old son rolled around naked in the sand and the 5 year old daugher was allowed to run into the water all by herself. It was obvious they were from Gauteng, the province with the highest crime rate in South Africa. Those poor children hadn’t been allowed to run around outside of the house for quite some time. The beached whale, I mean, conservative Afrikaans mother, to my right was NOT impressed, I heard her say to her husband: Kyk vir daai kind, hy loop popkaal! (Look at that child walking around stark naked!!)

As if I wasn’t being entertained enough, I looked up from my book to see your typical Indian family walk by. The young man at the front carried the huge breyani pot, big enough to hold enough food to feed his entire extended family. They were leaving and the pot was still half full. Tailing at the back of the family was the old drunken uncle. He was being very responsible and had decided not to just leave all the empty bottles on the beach. He was trying to carry about 5 empty beer bottles in each hand as well as his shoes. Everytime he dropped one bottle onto the sand he almost fell over trying to pick it up, only to walk 2 metres and drop another. At one point he did fall over as he bent to pick up a bottle, after which he decided that it would be wiser to wear his shoes, then he’d be able to hold onto the bottles a bit better. Amazingly, once he left the sand and got onto hard ground he didn’t drop one bottle until he got to the bin. There he realised that there were just too many fine motor skills involved in getting the bottles into the bin, so he eventually just left them standing next to the bin.

My two favourites were:
1) The old couple in their sixties still holding hands and looking healthy. Gran wore a blue bikini top with black shorts and Gramps wore plain black shorts. They didn’t try to look younger than their age, but they were current enough to know that a Speedo was no longer appropriate swimming gear for Gramps.

2) The 10 year old boy who was… what’s the politically correct term now- intellectually challenged? Well, he seemed to have an element of ADHD and maybe some mild cerebral palsy. But he was just so happy. He danced around at the edge of the water continuously. He bumped into people all the time. Little things on the sand caught his attention for about two seconds and then a wave came along and made him dance again. I’m sure he must be a handful for his parents when it comes to normal everyday things like going to school and playing with other children, but while I watched him I was almost envious of the utter bliss he appeared to be in.

I can’t help but wonder, do other people people watch too? And if they’re watching me, what label do I get? Lonely girl? For today, I’m ok with that label.