Everybody Has Those Thoughts So It Doesn't Mean You're Gay

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  The mini-golf course where Jack and his father played was old. That meant that there was an unusual amount of sand on the parking lot, the giant clown head on the 7th hole no longer made that creepy laughing noise, and if you placed your ball in the right place, you could putt your ball along a groove in the artificial turf.

  Jack’s friends hadn’t discovered the grooves. That was the secret to all of Jack’s victories. He wasn’t sure if his father had, and when Jack asked his father why it was that he kept winning, his father replied “I’m a doctor, and my specialty is in kick-buttockaphy”. But that wasn’t one of the types of doctors that Jack had learned about in school so Jack didn’t know what that meant.

  “I think I’m going to beat you this time, dad,” Jack said, feeling his confidence come back to him.

  “Well it’s important that you believe that son,” Jack’s father replied with a smile.

  Jack’s first putt was exactly where he wanted it to go. Jack had placed his ball on the very edge of the groove in the artificial grass, and like a marble it rolled around the course and into the cup. It was a hole in one.

  “Beat that,” Jack proclaimed while holding his putter over his head in victory.

  “I don’t know if I can. That’s a good shot.”

  But exactly on cue, Jack’s father lined up the shot and rolled it in too. It was another hole in one.

  “How’d you do that?” Jack asked.

  Jack’s dad smiled back. “I’m just that good,” he replied.

  The two walked over to the next hole.

  “So now I have a question for you,” Jack’s dad said to Jack who was lining up his next putt. “What happened during your game of Truth or Dare?”

  Jack stepped out of his shot for a second. But after a breath, he stepped back in, missed the groove and knew he would need three putts to finish the hole.

  A little peeved by his dad’s timing, Jack waited for the moment that his father was about to putt before he spoke.

  “I guess we were playing Truth or Dare and Billy asked me what my strangest dream was,” Jack said, interrupting his dad’s stroke.

  Jack’s dad stood without putting. “What did you say?”

  “Well, I had this really strange dream once where Billy and I were walking along this really narrow mountain path. And as we were walking Billy slipped and I grabbed him. He reached up and grabbed my shirt and it ripped. I then went to get a better grip, but he slipped out of my hand and fell.

  I didn’t know what to do so I got on my knees and looked over the cliff. And when I looked over he hadn’t actually fallen. He was holding onto the ledge.

  So I reached down, grabbed his arm and pulled him up. And when I pulled him onto the ledge, because it was so narrow, he rolled onto me.

  And we were both completely out of breath so neither of us could move. But at the same time we were both really relieved that he hadn’t fallen. And then after a second…” Jack stopped talking and looked up at his dad. “We… kissed.”

  Jack’s dad paused for a moment with almost no reaction on his face. Then after a few seconds, his dad broke the silence. “And this is why your friends said that you were gay?”

  Jack, with a guilty look on his face, nodded his head yes.

  Jack’s dad refocused himself, leaned over his putt and sent the ball past the windmill blades and onto the backside of the hole. This was certainly going to be a two putt for him.

  “Jack, dreams are funny things. Our brain is like a computer in a way. Just like a computer we have our short term memory; in computers it’s called ram. And we have our long term memory; in a computer that would be the hard drive. And do you know how when you shut down a program or turn off a computer it doesn’t always turn off as soon as you press the button?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said as he continued putting.

  “Well, that delay happens because the computer is moving all of the information from its short term memory to its long term memory. It is the same thing with your brain.

  All through the day your brain takes in more information than any computer could ever dream about. And while we sleep, our brain is moving all of our day’s memories into long term memory.”

  Jack’s dad quieted down for a second while he made his second putt. Jack then putted after him and made the hole in three putts like he thought he would.

  “The brain, however, has a super efficient way of storing memory.”

  “What does efficient mean?” Jack asked, as his father was about to putt on the next hole.

  “When something is efficient it is done very quickly and with the least amount of energy possible. Got it?” Jack’s dad asked, looking back at Jack.

  “Yep.”

  “So the brain stores the information in a way that allows it to be accessed very quickly whenever you need it. And the way it does that is by putting your daily memories into categories. A memory might be stored under the adventure category. And another memory might be stored under the good-times category.

  But then what the brain does is scan the memories for similarities to other memories. So let’s say that you were wearing your blue jacket in your memories today and you were wearing the same blue jacket in a memory that you had two months ago. Well, what your brain does is create a connection between the two memories by growing a neuron. A neuron is kind of like an extension cord between memories. This is done so that if you ever want to remember when else you wore that blue jacket, you can.”

  “Wow,” Jack replied while staring at his father.

  “Cool, right?” Jack’s dad said with a smile. “Now the problem is that when your brain is processing all of those memories, your mind has to be on. It is like the way that your computer has to be on. And the result is that we dream.

  I don’t think that you have actually walked along a narrow mountain path, have you?” Jack’s dad asked.

  “No,” Jack replied.

  “But you probably saw it in lots of movies, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, one of those movies probably had something in common with an experience that you had during the day that you had the dream. So what happened was, first your brain scanned all of its memories for anything that may have been similar to your experiences from that day. And once it found the similarity, the connection was made.

  When you had that dream, what your brain was doing was mixing and matching images from different parts of each memory to figure out what else fit. That mixing and matching created a dream about something that you have never done and may not have ever considered.

  Dreams aren’t there to tell you what you want or how you should act. They are what’s left over as your brain scans and stores all of your memories.”

  “But why was I kissing Billy in the dream?” Jack asked a little sad.

  “Because not only does your brain store the things that you see and touch, it also stores the emotions that you had during the day. And in one of the movies that you watched about someone falling off of the path, it probably involved a kiss. When you saw that, you probably felt like those two people had a close connection. So on the day that you had that dream, you probably experienced something that made you feel that you had a close connection with Billy.

  Your brain then looked at both of those feelings, and decided that they were similar enough to each other to connect. But your brain, working as efficiently as possible, made the connection by creating a dream where you kissed Billy.

  Your brain wasn’t trying to tell you that you wanted to kiss Billy. It was just doing what it does, and creating a connection between memories. Do you understand?”

  Jack looked at his dad, amazed. “Yeah, I understand. I guess that makes sense.”

  “And don’t worry, everybody has those dreams, so it doesn’t mean you’re gay,” Jack’s dad said with a smile.

  Jack remained quiet for the next two holes. He wasn’t playing his best today. He was a little distracted by all of the things that his dad h
ad said.

  On the other hand, Jack’s dad was playing better than he ever had. Jack took a moment to try and figure out how his dad was doing it. But instead of asking his father, when Jack spoke, something else came out.

  “What if that wasn’t the only thing that happened?” Jack asked while searching his father’s face for a reaction. “I don’t know if I can tell you this one.”

  “Why not?” Jack’s dad asked instead of putting into the clown’s mouth.

  “Because I don’t know what you’ll say.”

  Jack’s dad looked back into his son’s eyes, and Jack slowly shifted his focus to his father’s feet. Jack’s dad thought for a second and then made his putt into the clown’s mouth. When he did the clown started to laugh a creepy fake laughter. Jack’s dad didn’t realize that they had recently fixed the clown. His dad felt bad about the laughter. It wasn’t great timing.

  *****