Thursday, May 11, 2023

Aaron Rodgers is fat and has a tapeworm

I dreamed I was being vetted as part of a welcoming committee for Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. He was always a fave of Sharon's, and being from Chico, he attended Butte College around the same time that she was working there. She accumulated an extensive (and expensive) collection of signed memorabilia which, due to market fluctuations, I am unable to part with without losing a ton of money.

In my dream, this sports icon had fallen on hard times. He was still a celebrity, but he had to take his act on the road during the off season, making appearances at drugstores and grocery outlets to try to earn some extra scratch. It was at one such appearance at the local CVS pharmacy that I was summoned by local law enforcement to be part of a special backstage welcoming team. 

Our job was to conduct an informal interview and get some publicity shots with him before he addressed the crowd of fans that had gathered in the parking lot. But first the cop had to make certain that I was going to be a stable enough member of the general public to draft into this position, so he strapped a camera on me and proceeded to observe me while I was locked in a storage area in the back of the drugstore.

It was easy enough to convince him that I was no threat. I didn't try to climb the walls or burn the place down. I just waited around until they decided to let me out, and soon enough, I was a part of the team. Just like that.

"I'm sorry we had to put you through that, Mr. Golding," the cop said ruefully. "9/11 and all that. You can't be too careful. You never know who might just be a pressure cooker ready to pop."

I kept a stone face, deciding not to acknowledge his dark terrorism pun referencing the Boston Bombing. It's always too soon for that. 

Soon Rodgers showed up and made his way into the back room where I and the rest of the committee were waiting to greet him. He gave hugs all around and thanked us for being fans. I didn't tell him that I was not really a football fan, since he really seemed to need whatever boost he was getting from this event.

The first thing I noticed was that he'd put on quite a bit of weight since his last appearance anywhere. His belly protruded so that his hug was more of a belly bump than a hug. 

"Sorry about that," he said. "That thing is always getting in the way. I have a tapeworm, you know. It's been with me for a while, so I've been eating for two."

I tried not to look too disgusted, as this kind of thing could happen to anyone. "Don't worry about it," I said. "You still have a huge fan base out there. Now you go and give those folks what they want."

He did just that, and the parking lot crowd received him with a warm round of applause. It was but a faint smattering of the stadium sized roar that he was accustomed to, but it was sincere. He was still their guy--fat, tapeworms and all.

Meanwhile, the committee had another job to do. We were tasked with writing a review of a used mattress that had been listed on Ebay. It was very similar to the one I own, an Electropedic adjustable Cal King with two twin latex mattresses. I volunteered to review the mattress portion of the bed and quickly began making notes on some of the defects that I saw.

"This thing has been clawed by multiple cats," I surmised, noting the shredded foam protruding from giant gashes in the mattress's sidewall. "I think you are going to have a hard time unloading this. It's basically a piece of crap." My own mattress is in similar condition, and I'm pretty much stuck with it, since it would be too expensive to replace.

That's about all I've got for this dream. I am recording it late in the day because my time in the morning is spoken for by a couple of zombie cats with razor claws who demand feeding under threat of further terroristic vandalism to my mattress.

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