Questionable Similes

Dream

Barkley and I are on a baseball team. I don’t know anyone else we who shows up, and many of them don’t seem to know how to play. Our team is up to bat first and I lead off. I’m able to hit a double. Barkley bats next and hits me home. There is one girl and one guy on the team who are decent players so we put them next in the order. After Barkley gets to home we start making sure everyone else on the team understands the basic mechanics of the game. The girl who can play becomes a sort of coaching assistant, and we have her play catch with a boy who's struggling. He keeps throwing the ball underhand and when we tell him to throw it overhand he says he's worried that she won’t be able to catch a ball with a horizontal trajectory. Barkley tried to show him how to throw, but the kid is left handed and there's an awkward moment when he tried to give his glove to Barkley. Barkley ends up bare hand catching the throw (like a champion), and then demonstrates how to throw the ball. Our assistant is fully capable of catching it. Barkley explains that it's hard to throw very far underhanded since the ball has to travel such a large arc. The boy eventually understands and relates that the extra distance in an underhand throw is like if you had a club, but you used most of the space in the building for closets instead of dance floor. Barkley and I share a look expressing that we agree that the simile does explain the situation, but it isn’t one that we would have chosen. The dream skips to the end of the game and everyone is leaving. The semi-skilled girl and guy from our team are alone in the dugout and the guy introduces himself as Jeek. He does this in a way obviously intended to begin further relations with the girl. He delivers his name with a cool confidence that shows he understands how weird it is, but that it doesn’t bother him. She blows him off as a dork and walks away. When she walks past me I try to defend Jeek and ask why she rebuffed him. She says “Any girl that is interested in him would have to be tighter than Mt. Everest.” I piece this together to mean that Mt. Everest is some sort of screw to be turned, and the tightness on the girl implies virginity brought on by dorkiness.

Analysis

This whole setup is reminiscent of my curling experiences. Attendance to curling usually consists of a few regulars, who show up every week, and then a mix of people who are new to the game or have only been there once or twice before. It is a sort of unspoken responsibility of those of us who are considered “good” at the game to show everyone else how to play. Luckily curling is a simple game (at least at our level of play), and it’s still interesting even when many of the people playing aren’t very skilled. I don’t think the same could really be said of baseball, but this was a dream after all and it never really showed how our new players ended up performing. 

Jeek getting shot down is related to the annoyance I feel for people who completely dismiss things due to some perceived trait. This applies to people who dislike all video games on principle (although they often play games like Angry Birds or the like themselves, which are as much video games as any other, just not as sophisticated); those who won’t watch any movie more than 20 years old, since they assume it will be boring; and especially anybody who avoids something that has been labeled as nerdy, regardless of any other merits. The worst part is that the reasons for dismissing these things seems to be completely arbitrary. I mean, a nerdy label is usually based on a passionate fan base (there can also be an intellectual or esoteric aspect, but not necessarily), which only seems to indicate quality.  This is not to say that I’m not guilty of this offense (I won’t watch Johnny Depp movies for reasons that are far from justifiable).

Auguries

I’m going to take this as a sign that no matter how good I am at curling, it’s not going to impress any women.