Sniper

The story the muscular sweating guy sitting in my passenger seat told me was so incredible I suspected he was a pathological liar. It was the Vietnam era and I was a travelling salesman
driving somewhere in the vicinity of Kansas City when I picked him up hitchhiking. He said
he was a sniper for the US military serving in Vietnam. He explained his duty was to shoot
the enemy at long distances --a sniper. He said as a sniper he was treated as an untouchable
king at his camp. He had anything he wanted to eat, drink and all of the women visitors he
could handle. He indicated his appetitie for female visitors was enormous.
  I could smell his body odor which was strong like an animal's. He said snipers were
selected because of their metabolic rates. He claimed his respiratory rate and heart rhythm
were far above normal. He said that in civilian life which he was now entering --he had
served his term of duty --he would be forbidden to own a firearm due to the bloodthirst?-
not his choice of words -- that his profession had created. One of the precautions for this
killing addiction was that he and other snipers were forbiden to count the number of "kills"
they had made. It seemed to me that in the next breath he was claiming 156 kills.
   "But if you were not allowed to count, how do you know you killed that many,I asked.
   His answer: "Since they were all head shots, I assume they were kills."
   As he left I felt as if I was rleasing an animal into the jungle of urban life in America.
   I never heard from him of course, never knew his name, but have read of many violent
domestic incidents in which the perpetrator is identified as "a fromer shiper."
   I have not seen the popular movie American Sniper but everything I have heard rings
true to the story that hitchiker told me 50 years ago.

Running away from home

At 7 or 8 I must have had a disagreement with my mother because I packed
a few things and made it as far as my backyard. I lay under a disguise of
some sort and hear my mother in a loud voice: I wonder where he IS?
After a while I responded, we made amends and I was back home.
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Perhaps this was a break from my calling and conducting family meetings.
I'm sure I got the idea from my Playmate magazine. I must have had a
subscription gifted to me perhaps by our neighbor, Dorothy. It was my
favorite. I read every page. It inspired me to start a Help the Needy Club
at my elementary school. At a meeting we decided to leave some items
anonymously in the desk of Charlene, the poorest girl in the class. After
just a couple of meetings I remember standing and saying "I resign"
because my peers were talkative and unbusiness-like.

Feb. 4, 2015 -another dream with my sister,Ruth, and myself and mother. I don't recall the full dream but my sister and I were visiting my mother who was aged and living happily in an apartment. We left and I said in a stressed way to my sister "I forgot to kiss her (my mother) goodbye. Then I proceeded up the stairs to kiss her goodbye. Unfinished business? I feel very complete with our parting so don't know why.

Dream of my mother, now deceased 3 weeks.
I had picked her up from a hospital. She was dressed entirely in white just as I had seen her many times when I was around 8. She was working at a candy store. It may have been her first job outside the home since becoming a single mother. Any way she appeared to be 50 - 60 and distressed to be in poor health. We stopped at a small diner where she got up and fell. I helped her get back to the table.
She was agitated and fearful. I will never be free of a wheelchair Will I she asked me.
I sat in front of her supporting her and thinking No you will never be the same. It was also apparent to me that her personality was not the same. She had most likely had a stroke and was not quite herself.
    In real life I had to tell my sister in October "Don't you realize she is trying to hold on to her sanity." She did, she did hold on to her sanity.