Birds

When I was younger, teenage years, I had a friend who owned a parrot. His name was Fred. He was mean. He didn't have a cage; he just sat on a perch in their tv room. He had his wings clipped so they had little fear that he would get very far (which totally backfired on them because a few years later, he totally flew away). Anyway, he used to dive bomb at your head while you were sitting there watching The Young and the Restless after school while eating potato chips. And that is why I'm afraid of birds.

Side story: This one time when I was a very dramatic teenager, my friend was not at school and another friend and I tried calling her numerous times but we kept getting a busy signal. (This was obviously before voicemail was invented. Yes I'm old. Get off my lawn!) We decided to go over there after school to see if everything was ok. We rang the doorbell...knocked on the door...after minutes of no answer we tried the doorknob. It was open. We walked in. All the blinds had been pulled and it was really dark and spooky in there. We went into the kitchen and found the phone off the hook (this was obviously before cordless phones were invented. Yes I'm old. Where are my teeth?). We were getting more and more worried as this seemed to be familiar of every horror movie we'd ever seen. We started tip-toeing up the stairs and suddenly heard a blood curdling scream, we also screamed and tripped over ourselves trying to get the hell out of there. Luckily all the noise woke up my sleeping, sick friend and she came down to check it out. Apparently, her mom was at work but had left the phone off the hook so it didn't keep ringing and waking up my friend. And the blood curdling scream? That was thanks to Fred.

Stupid Fred left a lifetime of scars. I hate to be one of those people that talks about their dreams because I'm well aware of how dreams are really only interesting to the people that actually have them, but I dreamt of birds last night. Lots of birds in lots of different dreams. They were flying around my house, crashing into my window (but not dying, lest you give me the "omen of death" explanation), dive bombing at my head. And when I woke with a start and little scream this morning, I could not get back to sleep.

I hate birds.

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