Introduction: Real Fake Friends

This blog is intended to give a platform for various views on a variety of subjects similar to The Rant Board, but threaded per user request and is meant to complement that site's open ranting style forum. It is an open forum using the Disqus commenting platform which also accepts comments from other systems, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, and OpenID as well as anonymous posts.

If you are interested in blogging for this site, simply post a comment on the main page and we will email you an invitation. You can then blog about anything you like, creating discussion threads about various topics.

This is an extension of a community which formed in response to various local newspaper web sites switching from anonymous comments to requiring Facebook accounts, which many felt was an invasion of privacy as expressed on the newspapers' own message boards at the time. We welcome all points of view and respect your right to privacy and anonymity and encourage you to express any opinions you have on any subject you like. We also welcome your comments and criticisms.

Thanks for Reading,
Jason Smith

Night Traveler

When we first moved to Port Townsend, we moved into the Captain Brown apts. on Polk St. We lived in a roomy basement apartment there.

We three shared a full sized mattress in the big dark bedroom, my two year old daughter, my almost four year old son, and me.

My daughter always snuggled in close to me. 

She didn't say anything, but must have felt scared. I felt scared in that place. 

So did others who would walk past talking about how that is the building  'I was always afraid to go in to'.

After time (we were only there a year), we each had our own bed, still in the same room.

One night I woke up and looked up at the front of my bed,

and saw my daughter standing there, looking timid. 

I thought she'd had a bad dream, and was coming to get into my bed.

I raised up, she didn't say anything, or climb into the bed. 

I reached out to her, but she backed up slightly. 

She was wearing her favorite Pluto pajamas (I still have those).

I said her name as I reached out to her, but, I couldn't seem to touch her -  my hand went right through her image.

Then, I didn't see her. 

I heard her give a deep sigh across the room, over in her bed.

And, I remembered she had gone to bed wearing her blue Holly Hobbie gown, not the Pluto pj's.

I deduced she had 'projected;, felt afraid, and went back to sleep when I said her name.

I did not dream that, I was fully awake.