Strange Dream #1

Sorry that this post is so long.

There has been a person that I've been wanting to talk about here, because he's the center point of one of the proudest moments of forgiveness I've ever had. His name is James, and I have been thinking about him recently because I haven't seen him in over a year. The last time I saw him, he had run away from a home he was in, and I bought him a ticket for a rated R movie he was seeing with his friends at the movie theatre. It was a good rated R movie though. I gave him my phone number, but I didn't think to get his, and I haven't seen or heard from him since.

He was friends with my little brother, and he was the adopted little brother of one of my classmates. He was adopted around the age of five or so after living in foster homes for a few years, I think. He was a pretty hyper kid, and I think he might have had a little ADD, but he was a good kid. Some people couldn't deal with him when he got really annoying, but if you wanted him to stop, all you had to do was ask him politely. He would listen to you if you were polite to him, which is funny, because you'd think it would be common sense to ask politely, but most people didn't think to do that.

He ended up in my scout troop, and I was one of the cool older kids, and I was one of the only liked Senior Patrol Leaders. He got to be pretty close with our scoutmaster, which pretty much any cool person did because our scoutmaster is pretty much the best person ever.

Then he started having problems at home, and he snuck away to a friend's house for a weekend without telling his parents, and his parents had enough so they sent him to a juvenile delinquent home nearby. Our scoutmaster went to his family and asked how he was, and they said he was doing well, and that he missed the scout meetings and the troop. And then he started having problems there, and he ran away, which leads back to the last time I saw him.

Last night I had a dream about him. I was Spiderman, only I had some other superpowers too. I was standing in a room that was either for a banquet or a press conference, because I was standing on the one side of it in front of a long table on a raised platform. The president was seated at the table, with what I'm guessing was his cabinet, and maybe some family.

I was terrorizing them. I didn't really hurt anyone too bad. Someone tried to throw some black rock or piece of food or something at me, and I let out some kind of sonic yell that knocked them back into the wall behind the table. I slashed my right arm forward and some kind of psychic or invisible wave knocked several people off of their feet.

Now, behind me, pretty much everyone had already ran. But one person who was still seated about 3/4 of the way back was James, and I noticed him as he just shook his head, stood up, and started trudging slowly out the back door with his head down. I was so happy to see him, I ran back to him and tried to say hi. He just kept walking. I asked him what was up, and he just kept walking, not looking up, but said something like "You shouldn't be doing that, it's not right."

I sort of laughed incredulously at what he said, and shot back "Come on man, you used to get angry and do stuff like that all the time." James whipped his head left to look me straight in the eye. His face was a mixture of hurt and anger. "I don't do that stuff anymore," was all he said. Then he turned and started his slow walk out the door again.

I was taken aback, and I felt ashamed of myself. This was a person that I thought had looked up to me, at least somewhat, and now he's practically too ashamed of me to even look at me. I felt horrible. I followed by his side, but I couldn't think of anything to say. He walked out the back door, and up a vertigo-esque stairwell. I followed him. After he went up a couple of floors, he finally stopped, turned to me with a half-hearted smile, and asked "Do you want to play a board game?" "Sure," I said meekly.

I just sat there as he started demurely setting up and explaining the rules of the game to me. I felt so ashamed of myself and so little. Then we started playing the game, and that's all of the dream I remember.

Aside from everything with my long-lost friend, this dream has an important meaning in it that I rediscovered. I can't just let myself sink down to other people's levels. Just because my friends sometimes do bad things doesn't mean it's all right for me to do those same bad things.

Also, very much more importantly, I miss James.