So a month or so before Christmas I called my mom and told her that if she wondered what to get us for Christmas, she could get us a steam cleaner for our carpets. We only have two rooms with wall-to-wall carpeting, but they are both light colored and get things spilled on them a lot. Mom said that she had a steam cleaner that she never used and now that she had mostly hardwood floors had no need for it. We were welcome to take it.
Dean loves the steam cleaner. He uses it every opportunity he can. It also washes floors so I’m often awakened to the sound of the steam cleaner. He steam cleaned the basement carpeting a few days after we got the cleaner. He washed the kitchen floor the day we got the cleaner. This morning he steam cleaned THE CONCRETE FLOOR IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM.
If you have something that needs to be steam cleaned, please call him. He’s a man obssessed. I fully expect him to steam clean the sidewalks in the neighborhood soon.
So, last night the only dream I recall involved Helen and Indigo Bunting. I was in an unfamiliar place — it was dimly-lit, but warm and comfortable. There were other people in the room, but they were all shadows. Helen sat on a sofa next to me and we were discussing our carbon footprints. I was telling Helen that I thought her carbon footprint was much smaller than mine — that Indigo Bunting said so. Something about kids being environmentally unsound.
As I sit in my living room this morning and look at the mess my teen aged daughter has made of the room — papers strewn over every horizontal surface, tubes of paint littering the coffee table, broken Christmas ornaments she promised to donate to the art room, dirty socks and hair ribbons scattered around — from studying for exams half the night, I think IB had a point.
I’m not sure when I first saw The Prisoner, but I know it was on WTTW (Channel 11) out of Chicago. I suspect I was in my teens, but I feel as if I was younger and that I watched it with my parents. However, that doesn’t seem right — The Prisoner is not something my parents would have liked.
Regardless of when I first saw The Prisoner, it left its mark on me in a few ways. For one, I had an irrational fear of big white balloons. Honestly. Of course, I didn’t see them very often, but weather balloons come to mind. Now, where on earth would I have seen a weather balloon? Beats me. Maybe I just dreamed about it.
I also had a fear of those old fashioned bicycles — the ones with the huge front wheel — especially when being ridden by someone that seemed more comfortable in a painting by Renoir or a Charles Dickens novel than in real life.
And skinny men with long faces in striped shirts and tight pants? That scared me too.
Putting aside the few things that scared me on the program, it was probably my first taste of quirky science-fiction, and possibly my first taste of surrealism. It was unlike anything I’d seen, except for maybe The Avengers. It also, along with all other media in my life, helped shape the person I was to become. So, when I heard that Patrick McGoohan died this week, I paused and smiled and remembered Number 6.
When we first joined Netflix I rented several episodes from The Prisoner. We watched it as a family — my kids were very young, but liked the program. I think that they appreciated the episodes of The Simpsons where the big white balloon made an appearance more after seeing the “Rover” on The Prisoner.
We didn’t watch the entire series because we grew tired of Number 6 thinking he was going to escape each episode, only be thwarted in the end. I’ve not seen the ending of the program, but I suspect he is still in The Village. Maybe I’ll rent them again though — just for me.
Anyway, here’s to you Number 6. You are, indeed now, a free man.
Clutch Cargo Lips 