The stories we tell about ourselves.

In 2008, the television game show Jeopardy! hosted a Kids Week Reunion, bringing back contestants who were originally on the show when they were 10, 11, or 12 years old. If you have ever caught Kids Week, you know that every kid knows they're destined to be a brain surgeon, an embedded war journalist, concertmaster of a symphony, the first person to [enter achievement here], a Supreme Court justice, an astronaut, and/or President of the United States.

They have additional aspirations of curing cancer, solving world hunger, and ending political bipartisanship. They're so bright-eyed, and so smart, you root for them to achieve their dreams. Heck, aren't they already halfway there just by being tiny geniuses? So I made it a point to watch the Kids Week Reunion and see what kind of impact each now college-aged young adult had already made on the world.

For the last six years, every now and again, I've thought back to that week of shows, wondering just what happened to those kids, just what went 'wrong.'  Now, don't misunderstand me - I didn't think that by 19 or 20 they all would be Steve Jobs-like gurus. But I did imagine exciting D.C. internships, a patent pending on an invention, national math and science awards, a published book...things of that nature.

There is extremely limited information online about that week, so I have to go on memory - and what I remember is that they had somehow morphed into average citizens whose contemporary goals looked nothing like their assured dreams of yesteryear; looked like the goals of the rest of us who never competed on Jeopardy! as a child. Although I can offer no particulars, the disappointing ordinariness of the contestants can be summed up with the fact that one of them was currently attending community college.

The show runners responded accordingly by creating categories and 'answers' that were mildly challenging at best; the contestants, in turn, still struggled. And I remember feeling sad for their lost dreams.

More importantly, though, I wondered how could this be? There would be nothing odd about three or four of the contestants having stumbled along the way to greatness; but the majority of them?

If they were too bright-eyed as kids, too confident of their future, it wasn't their fault. Maybe their parents and teachers, even the community, put too much emphasis on the budding intelligence of upper-elementary students; maybe on that side of the American Dream a successful future was too exciting, seemed too inevitable.

Maybe those kids were told stories about themselves too compelling to resist.

You can't beat a flying dream.

Last night I dreamed I could fly.

In the past, the very few flying dreams I've had have been large disappointments, with me trying and failing over and over to lift off.

But last night I did it, I took a running leap and soared. And there were witnesses, and they were awed, and I went higher to prove that I could, and then dipped lower to let my fingers skip over the tops of trees.

There was someone else in my dream who could fly as well, a very nice young man just about my age, but he was content not to show off, just waiting until I was done so that we could fly together.

It was nice.

Dream myself awake.

On Thursday night I dreamt that I was in my car with a coworker, and she was in the driver's seat. It was nighttime and we sat parked at the edge of a forest, watching the sky above the trees. The moon was full, and it began to rise and set out of synch with real time; rising and setting, rising and setting, though the night itself never changed. It moved so fast that eventually there were two moons in the sky. It was like the old quantum physics visual, where you leave a room and see yourself entering the same room, but from behind.

Then lightning began, above the moon's arc, flashing in an endless, raging storm of bolts. Then a blue shower of fireworks exploded. The sky was out of control. The moon then took over, swelling to such an immense size that it blotted out nearly everything else. (I've had other dreams about the moon doing this, so enormous that the city below it is bathed in white)

Then I woke up.

As I was driving to work, though no rain was forecast, I looked above the trees and saw a bolt of lightning streak down.

A student told me about a nest she found, not snug in the cradling branches of a tree but resting against the side of her family's house, three baby birds inside, shiny and new, no mother in sight.

I came to an intersection and found a blind man crossing, slowly, tentatively. In every direction sat a waiting car, yet I was the only one who could turn and go on my way.

Dreaming, waking, seek and ye shall find.