Nobody Knows The Rubbles I Dream

I realize today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I send out my deepest respect to Dr. King and his dream and legacy, but January 18th is also National Catharsis Day, which every few years or so, like today, gets kind of pre-empted a bit, which is fine, but today I just have to get this out: For years now I've been tormented, haunted, unsettled by various re-occurring dreams of the Rubbles--Barney, Betty, and even Bam Bam. Just this afternoon, during my daily nap, Barney was serenading me with his hokum renditions of some of my favorite Bob Dylan songs (needless to say, a quite hammy version of "Like A Rolling Stone" is the centerpiece of his set). I can't take it anymore. At the risk of becoming a worldwide laughingstock, I'm spilling the beans here and now, hoping, wishing, praying that by telling the world, the madness might stop.

My childhood was not spent in front of the television. My first words were not yabba dabba do. Betty's cute, but she's an anorexic cartoon character who can also be a bit of a hen pecker--I'm aware of all of that; there's nothing delusional/weird going on there. If you had asked me anytime during my growing up to list my favorite cartoon characters, Bugs Bunny would have always topped the list, and the Rubbles would have been far down the list. I have no explanation for this dream phenomenon I've been suffering from, experiencing for decades now. All I know is that in a fit of fitness passion, I once emptied a bottle of Flinstones Vitamins, culled all the Betty ones, and ate them all with a single gulp of Kool-Aid, fully expecting my eight-year-old biceps to bulge immediately and maybe, just maybe, a svelte brunette to sidle by. Innocent kid's play, no? Well, within days Bam Bam was bamming in my brain throughout the night. Then came the endless nights of Barney's neon-orb face saying nothing but, "Hey, Fred" to me. There was no looking back: Betty in a bikini turning Dino on a backyard spit; Barney, Joe Rockhead, and Mr. Slate doing crude Three Stooges imitations; Barney and Betty playing Twister; Elroy,George Jetson's boy, time-traveling back to Bedrock to steal Pebbles away form Bam Bam at a school dance; Betty proffering me margaritas from a jacuzzi; Fred and Barney stoned, talking about Johnny Quest episodes; Wilma and Betty attending Undereaters' Anonymous meetings; nights where I found myself sitting on a stone couch watching ponderous slide shows of the Rubbles' family trips to pyramid construction sites; one dark night of the soul where I was engaged in a non-stop game of paper, rock, scissors with Betty, who always threw rock to my perpetual scissors and would cackle a victory cackle in my ear; Bam Bam catching me looking at his mother's legs and pounding me senseless with that club of his; the week I spent drinking coffee to stay awake to avoid the dream of Barney and that stupid little alien thing planning a practical joke on Fred that involved a car with a floorboard; a game of lawn darts with Barney, and every time he bent over, trying to look down his, what, tunic?, to see if the man has any kind of a neck; years of pleading with them all to try, just try, shoes.

Folks, these are just a small sample of the ones I remember. The more heinous ones are buried deep in cortexes I don't want to examine. If someone out there suffers similarly, I hope my story brings some empathy and the knowledge that you are not alone; if my story succeeds in blasting the Rubbles from my subconscious, you will be witnessing a changed, much happier, waking gum spitter outer over the next few weeks. Good night (I hope).

Sam Cooke-Nobody Knows The Troubles I've Seen