Friday, June 8, 2012

Neanderthals don't go to Montessori School

I woke up at 8:12am today with disturbing images dancing around my brain.  That's a record late wake-up time for me. In all honesty, I was up from 3:10am until 5:30 watching the last half of a cutesy Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks movie called Larry Crowne followed by some bad---I mean really BAD---TV.   I won't tell you the end of Larry Crowne if you don't tell me the beginning. But I must tell you about one of the other things I stumbled upon.  It was a show on NatGeo about the Neanderthal people---or so I thought.  I hadn't really noticed that the show was called "Taboo" until they showed a disturbing reenactment scene--at least I think it was a reenactment.  It was billed on the information page as "Neanderthal People" something or other.

The stated premise of the show was basically a challenge to the previously held anthropological theory that Neanderthal people of Europe were supplanted by early homo sapiens coming out of Africa.  Instead, the producers of this show were positing that they interbred with them.  Sounds like an interesting theory perfect for benign late night viewing, right? The really bad part was that they actually showed the coital interaction between the incredibly filthy Neanderthals with huge brows and noses and the incredibly filthy early homo sapiens.  This was romantically depicted by firelight while grotesque looking dread lock possessing Neanderthal children looked on.  My skin is still kind of crawling and I still feel vaguely dirty. I mean I was watching a show which included discussions about mitochondrial DNA as well as forensic anthropology and two seconds after they're discussing early hominid long bone differences with a scientist in a lab coat,  they flash to this image of two literal dirt bags doing it doggy style.   I kid you not.  Why this was necessary, I have no idea.  I'm sure when they say 'interbred' we can all skip over imagining what that actually meant.  I'm not a super prudish person but that was just plain old nasty.

I was fishing for the remote in the dark when I just burst into embarrassed laughter.  I wanted to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and start saying "I do not see you, I do not hear you, I do not see you," but it was too late. The damage was done, the images were seared into my eyes and ears.  Ech.

Anyway, I did manage to fall back to sleep after that kind of gruesome visual encounter.  It was the deep slumber fueled by the knowledge that there was no place I needed to be before 3pm today.  But it was also rife with the faces of the Neanderthal children, funny enough. They were touring a Montessori school in upstate New York but they refused to wear shoes. 

My interrupted sleep and twisted dreams came because I had a glass of white wine yesterday evening.  When I drink alcohol, I fall asleep early and then I am up in the wee hours wandering around polluting my visual memory with bad TV.  The reason I drank a glass of wine was because I was so tense and angry at my horse for refusing to load in the trailer. 

It wasn't anything personal on his part. For Goodness sake he's a HORSE.  But I've only seen him maybe 3 or 4 times in as many months.  Just busy.  Anyway, I thought I could do what I've done the last 2 times I've ridden him: just go fetch him out of the pasture and load him in the trailer.  Sounds easy enough, right? Not last night, apparently.

So it becomes this whole Buck-fueled failure complex all over again.  So I had a drink to ease my shame.  I knew this was a dumb idea--theoretically.  I knew that I would feel better for an hour or two and then be up half the night.  Not really worth it because unlike today, I usually don't fall back to sleep.

But I did it anyway. This set in motion a chain of events that would culminate in waking up at 8:12am to the images of my children as Neanderthals NOT getting into an Ivy League Montessori school all because they refuse to wear shoes.  Hey, that's pretty tame compared to what I could have dreamed.

If I could turn back the clock 24 hours, I'd probably skip the attempt at going to the fun show until I had some time to join up with the horse on the ground (Lesson #1).  Then I'd definitely skip the wine (Lesson # 2) and thus obviate the need for late night television "Taboo" (Lesson #3) and thus eliminate the need for electroshock therapy to erase that beyond-disturbing memory.  Since I am unable to cut and paste the fabric of destiny at will, I'll just have to make a mental note for the future:

No more "Taboos."  



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