Dreams

I know. From the title of this entry, you'd expect a serious, goal-oriented chap like myself to write about lofty aspirations, heartfelt desires for achievement, and visions of world peace, etc etc. But no. I just woke up, and was actually able to remember quite a few details from the bizarre dream I was having; so I'm going to share it with you.

The first thing I remember was that I was at my dad's house, skiing in the stairwell while waiting for the swim meet to start. (It's OK, they were special "indoor" skis, and the bannisters had been coated with talcum powder.) Apparently, this was a popular destination for stairwell skiers, and there were many obstacles upon which to perform stunts; you know -- wicker chairs, bird feeders, and the like. I don't know what you call the stunts I was doing; I'm only vaguely familiar with hot-dogging terminology. But I think I was doing mostly goofy backside 550 hydroplanes, or something like that.

I was trying to be careful, because I didn't want to hit any of the paintings on the walls. This is odd, because my dad's "real" house doesn't have the 5 stories of steps that his dream house did, and instead of pictures, the only thing he has adorning his stairway are some elk horns and brass band instruments. (Yeah, I know -- paintings would seem to be the logical thing to find in the "real" world, and a collage of hunting tropies and french horns more likely the result of spicy foods eaten before bedtime, but...nope. It's the other way around.)

I have no memory of taking off the skis, but the next thing I knew we were tapping out the secret codes on the wall to open the hidden attic room, where he stored his collection of board games and discarded swamp coolers. He seemed to get great amusement out of my astonishment over his newest game -- a mechanical "20 Questions" game. It appeared to be the kind of crumpled McDonald's sack you'd find in the backseat of a teenager's car, but if you asked it a question (only one, not 20), it would mysteriously post a sticky note with the correct answer on the side you weren't watching. We asked some easy test questions to verify it's accuracy, such as "Who is the President of Liberia", and "What is the average airspeed velocity of a laden swallow?" Some of the answers were accompanied by sarcastic remarks, such as "You should know that, you pinhead", and "Get a job, hippie!" But they were unerringly accurate.

If I were conscious, I'd have been skeptical, or at least curious. But in the dreamworld, I thought, "Cool, a psychic fast-food bag...let's ask it something important". (OK, since I had just come in from doing some crunchy aerial stairwell stunts, I probably said "heavy" instead of "important", but you know what I mean.) I asked it "What should I be doing for a living?"

Freud would probably interpret that to mean that I'm not 100% fulfilled in my current employement situation. I'll leave it to you to debate whether he might or might not be onto something there.

The bag answered with two sticky notes: "50% discount" and "Library books due". Not much help there. So, as any rational person would do, we marched into the next room to join the remainder of the congregation in singing the Star Spangled Banner.

In reality, I have an excellent and powerful singing voice -- something akin to what Robert Goulet would sound like if he had James Earl Jones's vocal cords grafted onto his. But in the dream, my voice was easily drowned out by some unseen soprano several rows in front of me. And it got really bad when the organ suddenly stopped working, and the soprano and I were the only ones still singing. I let her take it solo until the organ came back in...but instead of finishing with "Home of the Brave", he went into Inna Gadda da Vida, and I woke up.

And now, I'm going to have that song stuck in my head the rest of the day. Oh well, I might as well enjoy it. I hope your day is full of rock n' roll, too. And if you find a magic burger sack, don't waste time with questions about politics and science, OK? Get right to the good stuff.

Have a great day!