A tale of dreams ... and heartbreak

Surely you dream.

I’m thinking of nighttime, when you’re asleep — not wandering the streets at noon, eyes wide open, imagining you’ve just won the lottery.

My partner Melissa dreams in color, she says, and her episodes are almost always about everyday people in her life.

Except that they’re in bizarre and impossible situations, of course.

Me?

Perhaps this is a function of being just a tad older, but when I dream (which is rare), my best years are always in front of me.

Lots of them.

And in these dreams, Dr. Bachman was right.

The good doc treated my sister and me when we were kids, and about the time I was 11 or 12, he made a confident prediction.

“Steve is going to be about 6-foot-4 or 6-foot-5,” he told my folks. “He’s got really big hands and feet for his age, and that’s very solid indicator.”

Except that, solid indicator or not, his assessment never came true.

IF YOU’VE met me, you know that I have to stand especially straight to reach 6-foot even.

I still have big hands — great for wrestling with stubborn mayonnaise jar tops — and big feet, but all that blessed extra height never arrived.

For a kid who played basketball and baseball as long as my body allowed it, not reaching that promised size was a heartbreaker.

In hoops, especially, it might have changed my life.

I was a decent point guard, even at 5-11 and change, but at 6-5, I may have conquered the world.

OK, that’s a little strong — but Division I scholarship offers would have landed in our mailbox, and my parents would have been forced to field a lot of phone calls.

As it was, I heard from a single Division II school, which was willing to talk about some combination of athletic and academic scholarships.

And it would have cost us a bundle for plane tickets to fly halfway across the county.

So…

Nah.

I became an intramural king and city league player, along with fighting it out with some damn good players during a stint in the Air Force.

Not the career of a sporting legend, exactly.

ESPN has never asked about a special where I take viewers on a tour of my hometown, and we visit the drug store that had great vanilla cokes after practice.

SO BACK to the issue of my dreams.

In most of them, I really am 6-5 – and I’m having a terrible time choosing a school among the dozens who want a talented lefty point guard.

Or maybe I’ve already gone through college, and I’m dreaming about reunions with teammates.

Lots of laughs, and tales of last-second victories.

I’m also trying to decide where to start my career, and sometimes I’m thinking about starting a family.

I’ve come to believe that these are pretty cruel dreams, when you get right down to it.

I mean, I would have leaped tall buildings in a single bound just to play top-flight college basketball. Or to find another 10 miles per hour on my fastball and take a shot at pro baseball.

But when I wake up in real life these days, I’m just an old guy who’s had multiple back surgeries and prays I’ll feel well enough for a round of golf.

You know when athletes are interviewed and they say, “I’m just happy to be here”?

I really, really hope they mean it, because Dr. Bachman could have blown the call with them, too.

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball once monthly during the offseason.

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