Lizzie R.—I think I know what you mean.  Recently I have had many dreams involving my old college roommates, a time when the world was just bursting with possibilities, and it seemed nothing was beyond our grasp.  It is nice seeing them again as we were, young, pretty, and enthusiastic.  There has to be some meaning in these dreams.  I always wake up feeling encouraged.

Laura—Holy crap!  Your answer shocked me in its honesty.  I cannot imagine how you coped with that.  Maybe the topic should have been, "what is your best survival story," because you phrased your answer so well and succinctly.  Sincerely. 

C Hardy—I can see your point.  Honestly.  And I can see the points made by others.  I had a "relative" who was abusive to me during my formative years; it was very bad.  No one believed me until I was an adult and could prove examples of the abuse; suddenly they are falling over themselves apologising for putting me into that situation—too little, too late.  Unfortunately or fortunately, the abuser had died an early death from complications of a disease, about five years ago.  Do I feel good about that?  No.  I felt nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

I must have watched Dirty Dancing at least 10 times, if not more.  Patrick Swayze was down-to-earth and mesmerizing in that film.  His life was cut short too soon.  He was quite a talent and will be missed.

Frank—You gave me the first good laugh of my morning!  Thank you for that.

Ro H—I agree.  And those same instincts tell you when you have a keeper, right?  I have core friends I have known since grade school, high school, college—all who have my back when times get tough, I don’t even have to ask them, they are just there.  I am there for them, also, but I have always wondered how I lucked out.  I have had a few toxic friendships in the past, the kind where you say goodbye to the person and they don’t want to let go—I listen to them, try to see it from their side, before I say "this is not ever going to work out".  You are right, it is a gut reaction.  Oh, the stories. 

Mark Rowe—Funny you should say that.  I remember the dream I had before waking for my first day of kindergarten.  And every time I saw a monster movie on television, or something that nowadays seems as innocuous as The Wizard of Oz, I had a scary dream tied into it.  I cannot remember what I ate yesterday, but I can recall vivid details of my King Kong nightmares (a therapist had a field day with the symbolism there).   I had a lot of nightmares as a kid, but I always got away from the monster du jour with my astonishing flying power. 

"Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is a term used to refer to the generation born after the baby boom ended, extending from the early-to-mid 1960s to early 1980s."—Wikipedia

Would your staff like to hire me to proof your copy?  Seriously, I need a job, and am too young to retire.  My 401k—even if I cashed out—would last maybe five years of a poverty-level existence.  That’s my reality.

Chris Glass—I went to that site out of curiosity.  Are you the person who suggested books on Edgar Cayce to me a long time ago?  I recall talking about how my mother had been obsessed with the man, and how I saw the foundation in VA Beach, VA, when I was in my 20s—I don’t know if it still exists. 

Jumping the shark!  That’s a great phrase—I haven’t heard it in a while.  Yep, this topic definitely does that.  But look at how many outraged "hits" they got.  I know that is their bottom line.  And this topic did it better than some other dud questions of the week.  I think if we want better questions, we should send them to the site ourselves; they used to encourage that.

Gen X is NOT the same as Baby Boomers.  Whoever wrote your copy on the link here has it wrong. 

This interview brought back memories of my brother’s wedding over 30 years ago.  He married a traditional Italian woman, from a very traditional family, a situation I had never run into before (I was 18 at the time). 

I will never forget meeting the family the day before the wedding for an "informal meal," after a long trip.  Traveling always gives me stomach problems; I have a history of ulcers and GERD, from a very young age.   It was an incredible spread at a long table with a lot of lovely new people to meet.  I ate some food and stopped to let it settle.  The mother-in-law immediately asked me what was wrong.  I said nothing was wrong, I was full.  She got very upset, and after some time, the table was cleared.  I asked my sister who was sitting next to me why the mother-in-law was upset, and she told me "Those were just the appetizers."  My mouth dropped.

There were two more courses of food and desserts, plural.  I pretended to nibble, left all the food that was pressed on me, on the plate, and drank a lot of water, trying to socialize and keep far away from the amazingly skinny mother-in-law.  I was determined not to make myself sick just to please her.  I recall thinking how rude I thought the situation was, and, in turn, how rude they thought I was being by not eating.  I was sick to my stomach the entire weekend from anxiety and couldn’t wait to leave and get back to college.

I have since met other traditional families, of many ethnic backgrounds, who went without during the Depression, and expressed "love" by forcing food on me.  I get the concept, I get it, I get it.  I have gone through lean times when I lived on carrots and friends’ garden offerings because I could not afford groceries.  I still don’t understand a culture so obsessed with making me feel guilty about not eating excessive amounts of food—please do not be insulted, anyone—but I have rights too.  

Liz—What about the death of Patrick Swayze?  I expected you to say something about that last night. 

I have a journal near my bed so I can scribble down what I remember as soon as I wake up, and look at it again once I am caffeinated, to try and make sense of the images, and the mood I was in when I awoke.  Recurring dreams, especially, are my subconscious screaming out that something is wrong, pay attention!; those dreams do not go away until I fix the offending situation in my waking life.  This has happened to me so often and so vividly that I totally believe in dreams and the messages they send, whether I want to block them or not.

I am amazed at all the folks here who have no compunction about capital punishment getting all upset about this purely metaphorical question.  In my opinion, with the advances in DNA evidence clearing death row inmates, one innocent person being killed is too many.

I am against capital punishment, and got in some heated debates with folks right here, on this website, before I stopped expressing political opinions at all—it wasn’t worth my blood pressure.

That said, there are many people I have thought, in anger, about socking in the jaw, but I could never do it.  Once a person steps over that moral line of intentional harm, there is no going back.