I used to be able to program my dreams.

I’d decide what I wanted to dream about and how I wanted it to end. Then I’d go to sleep and let my subconscious take over.

Sometimes I’d wake up and remember the dreams. Sometimes I’d write them down.

I’ve grown out of practice. Now I’m not even sure when I’m dreaming.

I can still program my brain like a clock and it wakes me just before the alarm goes off, so I can turn off the buzzer and not wake the house.

Kristina, like the Good Daughter she is, takes care of me her Father, and says, “Dad, have good dreams. Dream of flying.”

She spreads her arms and swoops to show how you can glide without flapping. I always flapped in my flying dreams, but I wasn’t very good at it and barely got above the roof of the house.

To implant an image, she took a little wind-up tub toy, wound it up, and released the trigger. It was a fat little plastic fish, the fins flapped the way they would in the tub as the little fish flew through the water. Probably not the best image for flapless flying.

I confessed that I did not have flying dreams the night before, because I had insufficiently programmed myself. I promised to try harder.

I did not reveal that I didn’t really want to have flying dreams, probably partly because they were always so unsatisfactory.

Kristina just wanted to share with me the joy she feels when soaring free, controlling the air, riding the wind.

But instead, I dreamed I was Jack and had climbed the beanstalk. I had entered the Giant’s sleeping lair. Foul odors permeated the air. Food wrappers littered the floor. Sounds of snoring came from the ostentatious bed.

I tip toed across the room, stepping over scattered documents. There was an unlocked chest. I opened it. More documents met my eye, worth their weight in gold, variously marked “Secret” and “Top Secret.”

It was a cache of facts and evident truth

I remembered the movie with the line, “You can’t handle the truth!”

I stuffed some documents under my belt so I could take them into the light and the whole world could handle the truth.

I was retracing my steps when the snoring stopped and a shape shifted on the bed.

I ran for the beanstalk and started climbing down.

He was climbing down after me.

He was not very good at climbing.

His feet got lower closer and I knew he wanted to stomp me, crush me.

They say you can judge a man’s measure by the size of his feet. These feet were small, but relentless.

I felt it was all over for me. I looked up and saw the end was near.

I looked up further, past the bloat, and saw the fat head crowned with a thatch, like strands of yellow cotton candy all combed over the same way and jutting out in front like a prow.

I remembered the news conference where a voice called out, “Where did you get your hair?” and the response, “It’s all my hair,” and the rejoinder, “Because you paid for it!”

I climbed to the bottom of the beanstalk and jumped to the ground. I was supposed to chop down the beanstalk and fell the giant.

I looked around. There was no axe. What could I do?

I remembered the scene in Colombo, where the aggressive Police Commissioner wore a toupee that was part of the evidence.

He denied it, said, “It’s all my hair,” and a tug seemed to confirm it. Sharona looked at Monk who was now not so sure. She asked, “Are you sure?” He lowered his certainty to less than 100%, she said, “That’s close enough for me!” leaped at the Commissioner and tore the toupee off his bald head which revealed the bald truth and led to retribution.

So I looked up at my giant still climbing down the beanstalk, and he wasn’t all that giant, and I leaped up and tore the toupee off his head.

It was glued to a cork, and I had pulled the cork, and the head mush spewed out into outer space, followed by a rush of hot air, and the whole shape deflated and collapsed like a punctured weather balloon and fell into a little mylar pile at the foot of the beanstalk.

So naturally I remembered the old Texas joke when Johnson was President.

There was this tall Texan who was so tall that when he died they couldn’t find a casket big enough to fit him.

So they gave him an enema, and buried him in a shoebox.