Seems just about every kid has flying dreams.

They would tell me how they would fly so high, sometimes even above the clouds. They would glide like birds. They would hold out their arms and show me.

They would fly over the ocean and go to Europe or anywhere they wanted.

Sometimes they dreamed they were in a plane and would get into dog fights and shoot down their enemies. Or they would fly down into the Grand Canyon and just barely avoid scratching their wings on the walls.

Sometimes when it was just them, flying with their arms, they would flap to go higher.

I had flying dreams too, for awhile. But they were disappointing, then frustrating, and I finally gave up on them.

I just couldn’t fly very well. I’d flap my arms, but it was so much work and effort that I never got very high, just barely above the rooftops of houses, and I’d have to flap frantically so I wouldn’t crash. One time I tried to fly over our house, but I got tangled up in the plum tree I fell out of years before, so I had to wake myself up.

People would tell me how free they felt, flying in their dreams, gliding gracefully, banking and turning, adjusting their bird wings if that’s what they were using to fly, so they could just glide higher like a plane that raises its flaps.

I could flap and flap my arms, I never seemed to have wings, and I just couldn’t get anywhere.

It frustrated me, annoyed me, and I decided to try to figure out why I couldn’t fly.

A funny thing about thinking about a problem and trying to solve it, is that sometimes you find a solution you didn’t expect, but sometimes it was there all along, staring you in the face, and then it makes sense and it all becomes clear.

I remembered when I was very little I wanted to fly like Mighty Mouse. I never could, and I knew why. It was because I never could believe strongly enough that I could fly. So I gave up trying.

I think that corrupted my flying dreams. I couldn’t fly asleep because I couldn’t fly awake.

So I gave up on having dreams of flying just the way I gave up trying to fly like Mighty Mouse.

Oh, well.