When I was very young, I was almost convinced that I could fly. There was a dream I would get occasionally that was so realistic that, when awake, I would stand at the top of the stairs, spread my arms, and try to talk myself into jumping, just because I was nearly sure I wouldn't fall.

The near conviction of my ability to fly was not helped along by those reoccurring dreams where I was falling, and then would actually wake up once I 'hit' the bed. They were so realistic that I could actually feel my body thumping down onto the blankets, and would wake up, heart pounding, staring at the ceiling. Looking back at those dreams now, I wonder if it's not such a bad thing after all that I rarely if ever remember my dreams. If they were so realistic that they could almost convince me to fling myself off a flight of stairs when I was younger, who knows what they might almost convince me to do now.

Luckily, I suppose, I never did manage to convince that incessantly rational part of me that tends to run roughshod over the impetuous side most of the time. But the yearning is still sometimes there, even now that I am fully grown. Every so often, when I am standing at the top of a flight of stairs, the urge is there. And I have learned to stand back from edges; to not give in to the temptation to lean over a railing to look down the side of a cliff or a building. There is still this tiny voice inside me that insists with the utmost conviction that if I spread my arms wide and jump, just this once, I might actually fly.

This has been an AlphaBytes entry.