NITRO TAPE

It was developed by the Mafia.

It looks like regular Scotch tape, but one side has been fiendishly coated with nitroglycerin (a highly explosive explosive.)

It can only be deactivated with water from the kitchen sink. 

And for some reason, the Mafia had put it on my cat's belly.

Strange? Unusual? Weird? A dream?

Yeah. A Dream.  A dream so bizarre that when I told it to my fiance she seriously thought about calling off the wedding. She didn't. And since we're about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, she has finally given me permission to share it with you. 

She must not like you very much.

Be strong. Be brave. Don't judge me too harshly. If, at the end of this blog, you decide we need to call everything off...I'll understand.

Here's the deal: my dreams are directed by Ken Russell. 

This is Ken Russell. He is weird.

Mr. Russell is a British director. His movies are weird. 

Why Mr. Russell has chosen such a low paying job as directing my dreams since childhood...I will never know. There are a lot of other directors I would have chosen for the job. Kubrick would have been perfect. He's weird, too, but I like his camera angles a whole lot better. Russell likes a lot of hand-held shots. I don't. Especially in my dreams.

I have tried to forget most of Mr. Russell's night time work on my psyche. However, I haven't been able to forget two dreams he directed. I don't know who he hired to write them, but I have a feeling it was Samuel Beckett (who was also weird and a major nut. Well, I'm not sure about that but try sitting through 'Waiting For Godot' without wanting to throw a hand grenade at the actors.)

The first dream was when I was a young boy of four or five. I won't bore you with the details (I don't want to give Mr. Russell the satisfaction), but the bottom line was that every time it was windy, my grandma became a kite and blew away.

For years after this dream, I would rush her from the car to the house for fear that the wind would...turn her into a kite. 

The second dream was Nitro Tape. But I need to put it into some context.

I had a cat. A very fat, chubby cat named, Rollo. Rollo would sleep on my chest every night. The night of the Nitro Tape dream Rollo was soundly asleep on my chest...

DISSOLVE TO DREAM

The mafia is after Rollo. He's done something to raise their ire. I don't know what he did but the head guy is super mad. (Rollo scratched my cornea so badly once that I almost lost an eye. So maybe he did the same thing to someone in the mafia. I dunno.)

But the bottom line is that the mafia decided to whack Rollo and the method of whacking was...

NITRO TAPE.

So two goons...maybe Lou "The Leach" Lastrgassi and Jimmy "The Prick" Delmaggio got Rollo on the ground. He tried to fight them off. Ahh, he put up a good fight. But these were huge Mafia goons with guns. They pinned him down. Then one of the goons took out a tape dispenser, pulled about three inches of tape off and put it on his belly. It was the dreaded Nitro Tape. Then, fearing the impending explosion, they ran off. Those bastards ran off...leaving Rollo to explode his kitty bits all over the place.

Rollo tried to get the tape off. He scratched. He clawed. No use. Within seconds he was going to be all blown up.

AND THEN I WOKE UP FROM THE DREAM.

Sorta. 

I opened my eyes to see Rollo sleeping deeply on my chest. NITRO TAPE! I had to get it off!

I grabbed the sleepy Rollo and ran out of the bedroom. NITRO TAPE. It must have been about 3am. I think I screamed something like, "Nitro Tape! They put Nitro Tape on you! What do I do? What do I do?"

I wanted to run to the window, open it up and warn everyone that the mafia had put Nitro Tape on my cat! 

But there wasn't time.

I did the only thing I could think of. I ran to the kitchen sink. I plopped my sleepy cat in and turned on the water. (Note - Cats don't like that.)

I frantically splashed his belly with water. This was the only way I could think of to deactivate the nitroglycerin. I splashed and splashed and splashed.

And then...

I WOKE UP ALL THE WAY.

I woke up to see my cat in the sink. The water was on full.

I turned off the water and stood there. Rollo gave me a look; a sleepy, grumpy, feline look of utmost disdain.  

I picked him up sheepishly and carried him back in the bedroom. He shook his wet paws a couple of times and then jumped off the bed. For the next year he decided to sleep under the coffee table where I couldn't get at him.

When I told my fiance about this dream and the moments immediately after it, she worried that she would wake up one day to find herself in the sink.

I'm happy to say in 20 years of marriage it hasn't happened yet.

Should Mr. Russell ever decide to retire from directing my dreams, perhaps Spielberg could take over. I like John Williams music.