Carl the Time Sleeper

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Carl was a drunk.  He never set out to be a drunk, but life has its ways.  Carl had always wanted to be a railroad engineer.  A train driver in short.  Hpwever, life gave him three charcterisics which interfered with his desired path to his dream.

Carl loved to enjoy life.  There was nothing he loved more than pleasure.  He was the kind of man who would rather watch a comedy than to attend his own mother's funeral.  This didn't put him in good standing with Aliecia, his oldest and only sister, who found his lack of family commiment to be paltry at best.

Second, Carl was an alcoholic. Now, to be sure, Carl denied this most vehemantly.  And perhaps in some ways it was true.  Carl only drank on days that contained a "Y" in their name.  Or a "D". Sometimes he forgot which was the rule.  Regardless, that aspect of his life provided him with 4 divorces and 3 ex-wives. For some unknown reason Lisa married him twice.  The happy note on that would have been that he had fathered no children.  But there was no happy note in that regard.  Carl was the father of six healthy, active and mostly resentful offspring.  

Carl's third and perhaps most serious problem was that he had dreams.  While all of us have dreams his were of a particular nature.  Carl's dreams always came true.  He knew, no matter the subject of his dream, it would happen.  Maybe not always exactly as he foresaw it, but prophesy was assured.  For instance he had a dream his fish, Amanda, would die.  Then, lo and behold, eight months later it happened.   His prize goldfish up and died with no warning or symptoms.  The Amanda of his dreams was beautiful Angel Fish, with a notable bite mark missing from her tail. 

He also once dreamed he would have a toothache, and in less than five years, it happened.  

So Carl was gifted with foresight.  True, only of the mediocre kind.  But to him these where great and profound dreams which would guide his future, and that is where our story begins.

Carl was born a singularly unremarkable child.  The notable event on the day of his birth was the arrest of his maternal grandmother, Mildred.  It wasn't so much what she said that caused the event as her actions.  The authorities greatly frown on anyone attempting to suffocate a new born with their own umbilical cord, let alone the grandmother.  

It was at that time that Carl had his first of the "Great Dreams".  He dreamed he sucked milk from his mother's breasts and grew to be a big, strong, healthy boy.  We will therefore see it as ironic that the woman was not capable of breast feeding due to an infect, and yet Carl saw this as his pivitol moment in life.  Not, of course, as pivitol as the one thing he did see correctly.  If only lessor evils could be as easily avoided..