Dreamers vs. Pritchetts

I watch the show Modern Family, which airs on ABC. The show's most recent episode was a Thanksgiving story, to be sure, but more a story about dreams and dreamers--and their arch enemy, reality. Cam, the pink-shirted, husky gentleman in the focal point of the freeze frame above, is one of those dreamers. For years he has enjoyed "delighting" listeners in conversation about one of his tall tales in which he and his friends launched a pumpkin the full span of a football field. The pumpkin, according to Cam, sailed through the opposite goalposts and into the open roof of the school principal's car.

Through all the years of telling the tall tale of his "punkin' chunkin'" experience, his partner Mitchell Pritchett and other members of the Pritchett clan never believed that the story was true and that it was merely an exaggeration. In the episode as well are the spouses of two more Pritchetts, Phil Dunfey, and Gloria Pritchett who both complain that the Pritchetts are dream-stiflers. All of the conflict culminates in the scene pictured above where Cam sets out to validate his story and chunk a punkin' just like he did those many years ago. As the extended family runs out onto the football field to prepare for the test, Phil exclaims: "Dreamers versus Pritchetts!"  The realistic Pritchett's then watch with all the cynicism they can muster as Cam pulls back the pumpkin and prepares to launch.

Dreaming is hard work. Despite the quantity of inspirational rags to riches, basement to boardroom, nobody to known-by-everybody tales, we still find ourselves up against an army of Pritchetts who seem to find security in disbelief. They have got evidence, sure. Dreaming is risky--unwise, unsafe. Dreaming is also time-consuming and often expensive. Dreams are often deferred as fast as they are dreamt. 

Langston Hughes wrote this:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I surely cannot compare myself very well with Mr. Hughes, as his experience in life as a Harlem Renaissance poet was a bit different than mine. But I think he was onto something universal with this poem he titled based on the concluding two words of the first line. I'm a dreamer. I believe life should be exciting. I believe in going big or going home. I believe in living magical.

Sadly, for better or for worse, the magic we seek to conjure does not come. We reach into the hat and come out rabbitless. When I was little, I watched Thomas the Tank Engine and wanted to be train engineer. In middle school, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and fantasized about being a really-rich real-estater. As a high school student, I went to AP English class and yearned to be a "stand-and-deliver" English teacher. Older, I started playing piano and dreamed of playing Debussy on a Steinway. 

All of those dreams have since been deferred. Some have dried up, some fester, and some just sag.

The crazy thing about us dreamers, though, is that we never seem to stop dreaming. We are rebuffed at what seems to us every turn, but we still keep punching our way through. How beautiful it is that the persistence often brings success. We know the names. We know the stories. Here's one: my uncle dreamed of starting a hot dog stand. He kept his day job, stayed grounded, but three years ago he started his hot dog restaurant in a small town in Utah. He grills hot dogs and they are to die for. He chunked his punkin' through the goal posts and just nailed the principal's car.

So here I am again, dreaming. I'm keeping my feet pointed toward a day job, but my eyes toward the stars. This blog has everything to do with my current dream. I want to create a blog that chronicles my efforts to live magical--specifically, my current adventures as a Chinese learner living with Chinese natives. I want to make a blog that people enjoy reading, and, even better, that brings together two of the most powerful nations in the world. I want to make an English version. I want to make a Chinese version. I want to have beautiful photos to draw in readers. I want to have interesting writing that keeps them reading. I want to update each of these two blogs bi-weekly. I want to commit myself to that, and keep it.

My Dad loves the musical Man of La Mancha. It must be hereditary, because I love it too. The movie version starring Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren tells the story of a man gone mad who mistakes a mundane journey for a glorious knight's quest. Here is a famous monologue spoken at the play's climax:

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? 

To surrender dreams --this may be madness; 

to seek treasure where there is only trash. 

Too much sanity may be madness! 

But maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Sounds good to me. Look out Pritchetts, another dreamer is on his way.

"Want to go to the dance? Gotta wear the shoes." ~ Phil Dunfey