Rant #2,562: You Got What It Takes

Maybe I should be dreaming about my stimulus check, which is supposedly in the mail as we speak today, but I had a really bizarre dream last night that kept me going so much that I completely overslept.
 
Let me backtrack first before I tell you about the dream.
 
Since not having to go to a workplace for so many months, my sleep pattern has definitely changed.
 
I used to wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning, do what I had to do for two hours—including writing this column—and then go to work.
 
With no place to go since October 2019, I usually sleep until 6 a.m., or thereabouts, and begin my day.
 
At night, my sleeping habits haven’t really changed that much.
 
I watch pro wrestling with my son at least four days a week, and I have always fallen asleep in the middle of the show, whether well into it or right from the beginning.
 
No big deal when I was waking up at 4 a.m. I would just slide into bed, and wake up at 4 a.m.
 
But now, with no workplace to go to, I usually sleep until about 1 a.m., and then I can’t get to sleep until about 3 a.m., tossing and turning and sometimes going into the living room to sleep there.
 
I recently decided that if and when I fall asleep during the wrestling shows, when I woke up, I would not go into bed, but I would persevere and watch the show until the end, and then go into bed.
 
The ploy worked for a few days, but yesterday, I found myself to be very tired and worn out, for whatever reason.
 
So yesterday, I tried to watch the wrestling show with my son, passed out at about 8:15 p.m., woke up at about 9:30 p.m., tried to watch the remainder of the show, passed out again, and woke up briefly when the show was over at 10 p.m., and then I went into the bed.
 
I woke up at about 1 a.m., fell black asleep until about 3 a.m., but I felt it was very warm in the room—not an uncommon occurrence for me, I often feel warm when others are cold, like my wife—and I went into the living room to sleep.
 
I must have been in the living room for a good two hours, and then I went back into the bedroom, and didn’t get up until about 6:30 a.m., which is even more odd because my wife has to work today, so she gets up at about 5:30 a.m.—and I heard absolutely nothing.
 
So with this cockeyed sleep of more than 10 hours behind me, I told my wife that I had one of the weirdest dreams I have ever had. I don’t remember too much about it, but let me relate it to you and maybe you can figure it all out.
 
I was a kid again, going to P.S. 30 in South Jamaica, Queens, the neighborhood I lived in while growing up that is known as Rochdale Village. I have spoken about this place many times in my Rants, and it still holds a certain place in my heart even though I haven’t lived there in nearly 50 years.
 
Anyway, I was in class, and they were having “glee club” —I put that term in quotes because that is what my dream said it was, and not the “chorus”—auditions, and I wanted to be a member of the “glee club.”
 
Suffice it to say that I never wanted to be in the “glee club” or “chorus” or whatever it was called way back when, because to this day, I cannot sing a note, and even as a young kid, I knew that this was not my thing.
 
But in my dream, I wanted to be part of the “glee club” so badly that even when I was told that I could not be a member of this group, I wanted to be part of the “glee club” so bad that I actually tackled the teacher who led this group, and I mean tackled her so hard that we both hit the ground as if I was on the football field, not in the classroom.
 
In real life, the teacher I was tacking would have been maybe Mrs. Rampey if I was as young as the dream portrayed me to be, and in real life, this was a teacher I had no use for at all, a teacher who really never treated me very kindly because that is how she treated anyone who she felt had no musical talent.
 
I remember way back when that I lost my recorder—it was probably stolen—and I was relegated to the back of the room with all the other students who didn’t have a recorder either through it being lost, stolen, or they simply could not afford to buy one (no allowances were made back then for kids too poor to buy the instrument).
 
I remember that I felt so out of it in her class, and she did nothing to placate those without recorders, gave us no work to do and pretty much ignored us.
 
Anyway, back to the dream …
 
So I tackled the “glee club” teacher, whether it was Mrs. Rampey or someone else, and I started to sing to her a song that I knew the words to, to get her to put me in this group.
 
What was the song that I sang to her as I tackled her?
 
It was the Dave Clark Five version of “You Got What It Takes,” and I sang it to her so well that she allowed me into the group!
 
And that is all I remember.
 
Now, why did I sing that song to her?
 
I have absolutely no idea.
 
I know the words to so many songs, or kind of know the words, and yes, as a kid in 1967, this was not only a huge hit for the band, but I absolutely loved the song, and still do.
 
I still remember their rendition of the song on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and that the lyrics were just so easy to remember that you just had to sing along, even me who was tone deaf.
 
“You don’t drive no big fast car, no
 
You don’t look like a movie star
 
And on your money we won’t get far
 
But babeeeeee, yeah yeah,
 
You got what it takes.”
 
Those are the partial lyrics, but I can still hear the DC5’s Mike Smith singing those lyrics so happily on the Sullivan show, that the happiness was infectious.
 
And in my dream, for the first time in any dream that I have ever had in my 63 years, or at least for the first time in any dream that I have had that I can recall, I sang those exact lyrics—over and over and over.
 
After I woke up, the dream was still fresh in my mind, and I wondered what the dream meant.
 
Had I heard the song recently on the radio? No, I can tell you that I have not heard that song on the radio—even satellite radio—for quite a while.
 
What did the basics of the dream represent, when the teacher allowed me into the “glee club?”
 
I think the whole thing is related to where I am today as opposed to where I was a year ago.
 
A year ago at this time, I had been out of work for more than two months, with no sense of hope and no future, and believe me, as you know, all of this hit me hard, even though for the final months of my place of business’ existence, I pretty much knew that when they were finally done, I was pretty much done too.
 
Flash forward a year, and I am not only semi-retired, but I have a remote job to keep me going, one that came to me completely out of the blue, right before my unemployment was set to run out.
 
So right now< I am content, and I think that that is what the dream meant.
 
I did whatever I could during those horrible months to find a new job, ran into nothing but brick walls for a variety of reasons, and then VOILA!, right out of the ether I had something.
 
I was part of a real-life “glee club,” finally, not told why I wasn’t right for the job but told that I would be perfect for such a job.
 
And that is how I go into the beginning of the new year, meaning that I am content.
 
And that is what the dream meant.
 
Sorry Mrs. Rampey … all these years later, you were WRONG about me, You never gave me a chance to show you what I could do!
 
So Mrs. Rampey represented the workforce, the companies I applied to, and my rendition of “You Got What It Takes” was my proof that I could do a good job if given the chance.

And like the work I do--which is pretty much an extension of what I was doing when I lost my job--I know what I am doing inside and out, so it had to be that song, a song I know the words to inside and out.
 
See, I did figure it out on my own, and yes, evidently I do have “what it takes.”
 
Funny how the mind works, isn’t it?