dream #21

This is an short, old(er) dream from sometime in 2007.  I was dreaming in 3rd person, which had never happened before and had never happened since.

I am such a great artist.

I’m rollerskating ouside, near my house.  For some reason I drift over near my neighbor’s house and I end up rollerskating in a puddle in his grass.  I can hear the electricity clicking in the power lines that are directly above the puddle.  For a moment it passes through my mind that it might be dangerous to skate underneath such a low line, but I dismiss it.  The next thing I know I’m face down in the puddle, dead from electrocution.  Apparently the water had served as a conductor for some electricitly that had strayed from the lines.  The “camera” that is me viewing the dream pans out, and some somber script fades into the “screen”

Crista: 1990 – 2007.

When I woke up I facepalm’d.

But at least I know firsthand that the idea that if “you die in your dreams you die in real life” is a total myth.

dream #20

This one is really short, but I thought it was funny enough to mention.

I’m at some sort of family get together at someone’s house, and for some reason I decide to go clean the bathroom.  I go out to the garage and get a plastic bucket and sponge.  When I come back in, I’m met with a cheer of “Wooooooo!”’s.  I raise one eyebrow, wondering what that was about.  Nobody says anything, just stands there with their eyes set upon me, huge smiles on their faces.  I slowly cross the room glancing around at the people staring at me.  When I get to the hallway that leads to the bathroom, someone says, “Where’re you going with your boy-friend?“

“What?  What are you talking about?” I ask.

Someone points to the bucket and sponge in my hand.

“Wha… you’re calling this bucket my boyfriend?  What?  Is this some joke?”

“You tell us,” someone else says.

“Do you really think this is my boyfriend?” I ask in disbelief.

“You don’t have to pretend,” another person says.

“I can’t believe this.  This is ridiculous!”  I walk away to go clean the bathroom, shaking my head.

dream #19

I’m walking on the sidewalk late one night.  A man in a red truck with a white camper top pulls over to give me a ride.  Although I am only a few blocks from my house, I have been walking for so long that I’m very tired and eagerly hop in.

“Take your next right,” I say as we approach the turn to get to my house.

The man continues to drive right past the turn.  I figure that he either did not hear me or that he had not seen that turn, so I stayed quiet.

When he drove past two more right turns, I begin to panic.  “Where are we going?” I ask him.  But he stays silent.

“Turn here, turn here!” I yell as we come up to another turn.  But still, the man doesn’t acknowledge my existance.

“Can you hear me!?” I screech into his ear.

“Yep,” the man replies.

I feel my stomach drop and I begin to feel sick.  My mind shifts into high gear, trying to figure out a way to get out of the car.  I’m sitting in the back, all of which has been hollowed out (including the area that would separate the cab from the trunk) so that there is a bunch of empty space behind the two front seats.  I can’t jump out the front passenger side door because in order to do so I would have to jump over the console, unlock the door and get it open, and in doing that he would have ample time to stop me.  I have no weapons of opportunity, and there are no windows in the back to jump out of.

But then I remember that the camper top has a pull-down door, similar to that of an oven.  I slide my way to the back of the truck, making sure that the man doesn’t notice.  Then, in a flash, I unlatch the door and slide out headfirst, trying to do a tuck-and-roll maneuver before I hit the ground.

I stand up in the road and brush myself off.  The truck slows down, and I fear that he will turn around to come back for me.  I jump into a low spot off the side of the road where he cannot see me, and he drives away.

dream #18

A few dream-friends (dream-friends being people that I have never seen before in reality), one real friend and I are sitting in my car in a parking lot.  We have come from doing something enjoyable, although it is never established in the dream.

“Well I gotta get home, I have homework to do,” one of my friends says.  Two other friends chime in that they also have things to do at home.

“Come on guys, we just had a great time and now you just wanna go home?” I say.

“Seriously, why dont you just stay out for a few more hours?” my one remaining friend says.

“No, we can’t,” one of the other friends says.  “Look, if you guys want to stay out longer, you don’t have to give us a ride home, I can just call my mom and she’ll come pick us up.”

“Okay,” I say.

My friends get out of my car to wait in the parking lot for their ride.  I begin to back out of the parking space, only to find my driving to be severely impaired.  I back up too far, forget to step on the break, shift from reverse to drive without even bothering to step on the break, overcompensate when I turn around a row of cars in the parking lot and almost hit one and undercompensate when I turn to get onto the road and almost end up driving on the wrong side of the road.

“Jeez, what’s wrong with me?” I say.  “Okay, we’re on a straightaway, I should be able to handle this with no problems.”

After a few minutes of being on the road, my friend says, “I don’t remember taking this road on the way here.  I think we’re going the wrong way.”

“I’m not sure we’re going the right way either,” I say.

Our thoughts are confirmed when we come up to a strange triangular roundabout that is similar to a cul-de-sac.  It is rather peculiar for a few reasons:  first, the roundabout only leads vehicles in one direction – back the way they came.  Second, the road inside the roundabout is marked with bicycles, which we assume means that the roundabout is only to be used by people on bikes, although the road is clearly wide enough for a car.

Having no other choice, I begin to drive through the bikes-only roundabout.  My friend questions whether I should drive through it, but I explain to her that I really have no other choice, because it is the only way to go.

We start to head in the other direction and eventually pass the place that we had left earlier.  The road has almost no exits, so we have no choice but to continue in the direction opposite the roundabout.  After about a half-hour of driving we come across a place that I have been to before (in another dream, in fact). The place is a strange combination of a fair, a casino and a shopping mall.

“Hey, let’s stop here.  I’ve been to that place before and I bet if we go in there I can figure out how to get to the highway we need to get on to get home.”  The parking lot is almost completely empty, as it is about 10:00 PM.

We spend about an hour wandering around the huge building looking for the other entrance/exit while occasionally popping into a store to see if they carried anything of interest.  Finally, at the other end of the building, we had found the highway.  But all of our wandering had made us thirsty, so we stopped at a carnival-style food vendor for some drinks.

The soda fountain, which was a serve-yourself-and-pay-at-the-counter type deals, had about 50 different soda flavors to choose from.  There were also some more expensive
drinks like milkshakes and daiquiris and piña coladas that came out of the same type of fountain as the one that dispensed soda, although they were unusually high above arm level.  Since I had a few extra bucks, I decided to go for one of the fancy drinks, opting for a piña colada.

I put my cup up to the dispenser and pushed the button.  A combination of the colada and marbles was falling into my glass (in the dream world the marbles were a novelty and weren’t considered strange).  As the drink reached the top of the class, I took my finger off the button.  But the drink continued to come out of the dispenser and my glass began to overflow.

“Hey, what the hell!  This drink isn’t stopping!  How do you stop this thing?” I yell to the lady behind the counter.

“Just give it a second, it doesn’t shut right,” she replied.

By the time the fountain had stopped shooting the drink into my cup my hands were covered with freezing cold piña colada and marbles.  I walked over to the counter and set my drink down.

“You okay?” the woman behind the counter asked me.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, my hands are just covered in freezing marbles,” I said sarcastically, as though this was a terrible injury.  “Do you have anything I can clean up with?”

“Yeah, ‘roung the corner on the right, in the back room, there’s a sink.  Should be some towels in there too.”

My friend and I went back to the room.  As I cleaned off my hands I noticed a box of novelty pens advertising the vendor.  I decided to take a few of them as a souvenir.

We left with our drinks in hand.  That was when my dad woke me up to tell me there were tamales for dinner if I wanted any.

dream #17

This was a very strange dream.

I go into a tattoo shop with a clear idea of what tattoo I want.  When I meet the artist who is supposed to be doing my tattoo, I realize that it is a boy that I went to elementary school that I had a crush on.  When he asks me what I want to get done, my mouth overrides my brain and, instead of showing him the design I want to get, I tell him I want to get my forearm and hand tattooed to look like a skeleton.  I can’t believe what I am saying, but when I try to tell him that that is not what I want, I can’t speak.  He gets started, and I sit in the chair in agony thinking of how I will be branded for life with this idiotic tattoo.  He starts at on my wrist, and after he has finished that area he tells me that it’s time for him to take a break.  He goes into a room out of my range of sight.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I say to myself, my speech no longer supressed.  “This isn’t what I want, and if I don’t leave I’ll end up with a totally retarded tattoo that I hate!  And if I wait for him to come back, I might not be able to leave!”

I slide off the chair and sneak out of the shop.  When I get outside, I find two of my friends waiting for me (one which I am friends with in reality, one that I have never seen before in reality).  One friend tells me that I have to go with them to a location that she never specifies, and she says that it is urgent.  I tell her that I will follow her there in my car, but she says that cars go too slow, and that we have to take her helicopter.  I agree to go with her in her helicopter, although I was previously unaware that she had one.  We walk out to the parking lot, but when we get to her helicopter, I find that it is more like a pogo stick with a propeller.  It has a 3-person seat that is little more than a park bench without a back, and it has handle bars for the person sitting in the middle to steer with.  We sit down and my friend switches the motor on.  We take off, and in seconds we’re 40 stories up in the air.

“I wish this thing had seat belts!” I shout to my friend.  “This seems really dangerous!”

“Oh don’t worry about it, we’ll be fine!” she replies as she sends the contraption into a nose dive.

“What are you doing!?” I shriek.

“We have to land on that roof over there, I’m closing in on it!  Jesus Christ, chill out!”

Holding on to the middle bar for dear life, I brace myself as we land on the roof of the building.  There are two cars parked back to back atop the building – a Volkswagen Beetle and a Scion TC.  I straighten myself out after getting off the helicopter as my friend introduces me to the person that we have apparently flown in to meet.

“This is Rob.  We have to help him get that car-” she says, pointing to the Scion, “off of this roof, without anyone noticing.”

“Well what about the other one?” I ask, confused.

“Oh that’s Rob’s car, we don’t have to worry about it.”

“What?  Well then who does the Scion belong to?”

“I don’t know!” she says, exasperated.  “We’re stealing it!  Haven’t you paid attention to a word I said?”

She turns and walks away to talk to a couple Spanish women who are standing next to the two cars.

A young boyish girl bursts through the rooftop door from inside, shouting, “There’s a security guard coming, you guys better figure something out quick!  He’s on the 37th floor, and I jammed the elevator to buy you guys some time.  But it ain’t gonna take him that long to get up 3 flights of stairs, so get moving!”

Rob, the Spanish women and my two friends start to panic, desperately trying to figure out what to do.  I glance around the rooftop, and I notice that there are bathrooms in the right corner.  They have large openings that lead to a short hallway before the stalls rather than doors.

“Guys, I have an idea,” I say.  “The ladies’ room entrance is just big enough for you to park your car in there our of sight, Rob.  Switch license plates with the other car and move yours into the entrance hallway.”

As Rob finishes switching the plates, the boyish girl comes through the door again and says that the security guard will be coming through the door any second.  Not having enough time to move his car into the bathroom entrance, Rob tells us all to pile into his car and lay low, and hopefully the guard will only take a quick look around and be hon his way.

Looking up through the window, I can see the guard come through the doors.  He approaches the two cars, but doesn’t look inside.  He pulls out a device similar to those used for taking inventory at stores, and runs the license plate numbers through them.  Since the plates have been switched, he notices that someting strange is going on.  He looks inside the car and sees all of us looking back at him.  He opens the driver’s side door and pulls Rob out while ordering us to get out as well.  As I open my door, Rob breaks away from the security guard and proceeds to pull me out of the car and starts to hit me, shouting, “You stupid bitch, this is all your fault, now I’m going to go to prison!”  The officer tries to restrain him, but Rob begins to beat the officer as well.

Seeing a good opportunity to escape, my two friends and I rush back to her helicopter and fly away, leaving Rob and the Spanish women to an unknown fate.

dream #16

After a dry spell I finally had a dream that I remembered.

I’m at a house – an average-size, single story house – that has been converted into a very small shopping mall.  I’m alone in the shoe section browsing, when I notice a commotion a few feet away.  I walk over to see what’s going on.

“What is that!?” I hear a woman shriek.  I stand on the tips of my toes to try and see over the heads of the people in front of me.  There was a very small animal crawling out of one of the shoes, but it was like no animal I had ever seen before.  It looked like the alien from Alien.

Nobody was sure what to do, but nobody would approach the life form, as if we all had an intrinsic knowledge that the thing crawling out of the shoe was a monster.  Finally, a man picked up the shoe, monster still inside, and sealed it inside of a shoebox until we figured out what to do.

And then there were more.  They came out of nowhere, and there were hundreds of them.  They were only about three feet tall, with bluish-gray skin and a hint of red on their faces.  At first they did nothing – just stood there, facing us.  Someone started to cry from fear, and that was when they attacked us.  I dashed to the left and climbed atop a tall shoe display, where I stayed unnoticed by the monsters who were tearing people apart with their sharp teeth.  I could only watch, helpless and horrified.  The numbers of people in the store were winding down.  Two of the monsters teamed up and charged a man who was trying to beat them with a bar he had pulled from one of the shoe racks.  As they knocked him to the ground, he landed on top of the shoebox that was holding what I had by that time gathered to be one of their babies.  The shoebox was flattened, and so I assumed that the baby monster inside had been crushed to death.

“My baby!” one of the monsters yelled in a scratchy, creaking voice.

They can talk?! I thought to myself.  I began to be unsure if I would make it out of the store alive.

“Half of you to the other stores and kill everyone you see,” the mother screeched to the other monsters.  “Make sure you find everyone – check for hiding places.  The rest of you stay here and help me look for anyone else in this store.”

I began to make a plan for my escape.  Since the mall was a converted house, there was only one door to get in, and the same door was used to get out.  It was on the side of the house opposite to the shoe store.

The remaining monsters in the shoe store scattered to the other sections.  The mother stayed behind, opening the box and pulling out her offspring.  She held it for a few moments, and then dropped it and darted off to join the others.  I stood up on the display case, being careful not to hit my head on the ceiling.  I had nearly a bird’s eye view of the store.  There were no monsters in my immediate vicinity, but since the store was so small it would be very easy to be caught by one of them within a few steps.

Then I remembered the bar from the shoe rack.  It hadn’t done the man who was using it before a lot of good, but I had a gut feeling that if I were to use it I would have more luck.  I took my shoes off so I could move around in my socks without being heard.  I quietly dropped down from my display table and picked up the bar.  I peeked around the shoe rack for monsters.  The coast was clear, so I stealthily creeped my way to the exit of the store.  Next to the exit was a register, which I hid behind for a moment – I was afraid to go out, because the entrance was a large open space where I would be venerable to an attack from any direction.  But I knew I couldn’t stay, so I stood up, pressed my back to the wall and crept out of the store.  There was about 30 feet to the main entrance/exit of the mall.  To my surprise, there were no monsters in sight.

I had moved about ten feet when I heard a strange clicking noise.  I turned around and noticed three monsters running at me.  Not thinking, I dropped the bar and ran as fast as I could for the exit.  The monsters were very close behind me, trying to claw at my back.  When I reached the door, I had to stop momentarily before I could open it.  The monsters tore up my back and neck, but I could barely feel it as I pulled the door open and slammed it shut.  I ran to one of the neighboring houses and hid in their back yard.  But for some reason the monsters never came out after me.

dream #15, sort of but not really

I had this awesome dream of epic proportions involving mass hysteria, a prison camp (that would be the third prison camp dream since I started this blog 3 months ago, although I was helping people out of the camp instead of being stuck inside it), and a large fire, but unfortunately after I woke up I couldn’t remember any details.  It was one of those frustrating moments where you wake up knowing that you had an awesome feature-film quality dream but can’t remember what on earth it was about.

What I do remember vividly though, was at the end of the dream I ended up in a Waffle House, and I had had a baby.

I really, really, really hope that this dream isn’t some weird dream-prediction of events to come, because I can’t imagine myself in a Waffle House, much less with a child.

I also had a dream about this girl I used to be friends with a couple years ago teaching me photography techniques, which I forgot the details of, and another dream that I don’t remember at all at the moment (read – 5:25 A.M.), but know that I had.

I hope reading this is as frustrating as not being able to remember that dream is.

dream #14

When I was a kid, I was always amazed with cartoons that had faceless characters.  Once, when I was about four years old, I was watching an episode of Muppet Babies where Nanny and the Muppets were going through an old photo album of hers.  The pictures, apparently taken by a blind photographer since her face was never in the shot, showed Nanny doing various odd jobs she had done over her life.  One particular photo was of Nanny working at a drive-in diner as a waitress on roller skates.  You could see all of her body, save for her head which was stuck inside a customer’s window.  I remember wishing there was a way to rewind and pause the TV so I could get really close to the screen to scrutinize the car’s rear window, thinking there may be a face behind it.

Much later, when I had moved from Muppet Babies to Powerpuff Girls, I constantly tried to catch a glimpse of Miss (Sara) Bellum, the “brains” of the Mayor’s operations (duh-dun-tss!).  It bothered me to no end that there were characters on the screen who the other characters could see but the audience could not.  I never really understood why show creators would purposely leave a character’s face missing, or, in the case of Charlie Brown, not even let the faceless (completely unseen, actually) character speak correctly!  I can only think of one reason:  because they want to drive the kids mad.  Shows that did this haunted my childhood, and the show that had the most impact was Cow and Chicken.

Cow and Chicken’s parents were two incredibly creepy pairs of legs.  We never got a glimpse of them above the waist.  The show’s artwork made me feel strangely uncomfortable when I would watch the show, and it was especially hard for me to watch when Mom and Dad were on screen.  It was nightmarish.  Literally.  Well, I dreamed about it, anyway.

I had this dream when I was in 4th grade and “liked” it so much that I incorporated it into a short story that we were supposed to be writing.  It didn’t fit into the story at all, but I thought it was creepy enough to be good story material.  Onto the dream:

I wake up in a house.  It is my house in the dream, but does not resemble my house in reality.  My room is completely dark, except for the moonlight shining through my open window.  It’s forebodingly cartoonish.  I hear a strange noise coming from downstairs.  I creep down the hall and glide half way down the stairs.  I crouch to look through the slats on the stair’s railing.  I can’t see anyone, but I can hear wrappers crinkling, like someone is going through the fridge.  Although I live with my parents and sister, something strongly tells me that it is not one of them.

I tiptoe down the rest of the stairs and hug myself against the outside of the kitchen wall.  I sidestep to the opening to the kitchen as if I’m walking on the ledge of a tall building.  I peek my head around the corner of the kitchen opening.  What I see makes my jaw drop.

It is Mom, from Cow and Chicken.  But I can see her whole body, face and all.  She has a fat, heart-shaped pasty white face, a pig-nose and short, curly blonde hair.  I am so stunned that I cannot move for a few moments.  Mom apparently feels my presence, because she looks away from the fridge and stares right into my eyes with a sad, scared look on her face.  My senses snap back to me, and I dart around the corner from which I came.  I listen for the crinkling again, hoping that maybe I imagined her seeing me, and that she would still be there when I looked back around the corner.  I hear nothing.

I took one small step into the kitchen.  The fridge was closed and Mom was gone.  I took a few more steps in to look around and see if she was hiding from me somewhere.  At first glance, it seems as though she has vanished into thin air.  I’m to leave the kitchen when I hear some whimpering.  I look on top of the fridge, and there’s Mom, scrunched between the top of the fridge and the bottom of a high cabinet.

I look up at her.  “Why are you crying?” I ask.

“You saw my face.” she says quietly.

“So?  To be honest, I always wanted to.  I never liked only being able to see your legs.”

“You saw my face!” she says, louder this time.

“I can still see your face!” I say.

“YOU SAW MY FACE, YOU SAW MY FACE, YOU SAW MY FAAAACE!” she begins shreiking.

“Shut up!  Shut up!” I yell back at her.

“YOOOOOOOOOU SAAAAAAAAAAAW MYYYYYY FAAAAAAAACE!”

It scared me so badly that I woke up.

A good 10 years later, long after I began to believe I was done with faceless characters, a new one showed up.

Anna Baldavitch on the Venture Bros.  She was only on two episodes (and can’t come back, since she died), but watching Careers in Science brings back some bad childhood memories.

dream #13

I’m at some strange type of prison camp for an unknown reason.  There are thousands of other people there with me, with ages ranging from infants to around 45 years old.  Some of my old friends are there with me.  At this camp we are mostly free to do what we want and are forced to do only one thing per day:  ride in The Cart.  The Cart is a large uncovered metal box with rows of seats filling it.  It is pulled along a track that is elevated high off of the ground, similar to a roller coaster.  During the ride surnames are called out through a loudspeaker.  When a person’s last name is called, the bottom of their seat falls out from underneath them, and they fall to their death.  None of us understand why we are at the camp or why the people running the camp are doing this to us.

One day, after The Cart returned to the loading area, one of the camp workers informed us that the camp leader had decided that the Cart rides were not enough and that he had decided to instate “intellectual testing” to see who was fit to stay and who would have to be killed.  The tests would be held on random people at random dates, and today was be the first.

“If I call your name, you may leave,” the camp worker said.

The camp worker called the names of 2/3 of the people in The Cart.  He did not call me.

“The rest of you,” the camp worker shouted, “will step out of The Cart and exit through the C corridor.  You will follow the C corridor all the way down until you reach a door marked “I.T.”  The door will be on your left.”

We followed his directions.  When we got to the I.T. room, the door was unlocked.  In fact, there was not even a locking mechanism – it was just a plain metal doorknob.  This was surprising because the camp worker had spoken of the new protocol as though it were a very grave situation that was not to be taken lightly.  How important could it be if there wasn’t even a basic lock on the door?

When we opened the door to the I.T. room, we were even more surprised.  It looked like a boiler room.  We began to think that the camp workers were playing a joke on us.

Then one of the people in the group noticed something blinking on a square pillar across the room.  It was a single LED light.  He crossed the room to take a closer look.

“There’s a little piece of paper here,” he said. “Intellectual Testing behind this pillar.”  He peeked his head around the pillar’s corner.  “There’s just a stool and a metal box hanging off the wall!” he said incredulously.

The rest of the group moved in to see what we were about to be subjected to.  Indeed, it was puzzling.  Just a bar stool and a metal box that resembled a melodramatic sinister switch-box from the movies.

“That’s it!?” said one person.

“Why didn’t they leave us any directions?” said another.

“This mus be some kind of joke,” someone else deduced.

There was a red POWER button on top of the box.  I pressed it.  The front of the metal box illuminated, showing a strange screen.  A woman’s voice said, “Your test will begin in ten seconds.”  She began counting down.

We quickly formed a line.  The man who had originally discovered the box was the first person to take the test.  I was the second.

The man sat in the stool and the computer told him that the test was comprised of four different sections and that the whole test would take less than three minutes.

As I watched him take the test from a distance, it became clear that the first test was to sing the national anthem.  The man sang the song, stumbling in places and pausing here and there to try desparately to grab the right word.  After he had finished, the screen displayed the word “SLOW” in large enough letters that I could see it.  The man was not off to a good start.

Although I could not understand what the other three tests were from the distance I was standing, I could clearly see that the man taking the test was not doing well.  He began to sweat, and towards the end of the test he began to cry.  When he finished, he approached with tears in his eyes saying, “Good luck, I hope you do well.  I’ve been here for ten years and managed to stay alive, but I think I might die tonight…” He began to ramble on, and while I felt bad for him, I knew that I had to keep my wits about me if I wanted to do well on the test.

I perched myself on the stool and pressed the POWER button.  The woman’s voice repeated the same information that had been given to the man that had gone before me.  Four tests, under three minutes total.

The national anthem was again the first test.  I had gone over the anthem’s words a few times in my head while the man before me was still working, to make sure that I would not have to pause the way he did.  When the song ended, “FAST” blinked on the screen.  I smiled to myself.

The screen briefly displayed the instructions for the second test.  “Recite a brief factual essay based on the image provided.”  The screen counted down from three, then displayed a rotating image of Earth.  In various spots there were red marks, perhaps indicating cities or countries, although I was not sure.  I caught a glimpse of Africa and said, “There are many poverty-stricken countries in Africa.  Sometimes people from the United States visit them to help the starving people.  Sometimes people from the United States visit them to go on a safari.  You have to get a series of shots before you can go, though.”

The screen went blank, indicating the test was over.  “GOOD” blinked briefly.

The directions for the third test were peculiar, and I began to wonder if it was trick.  “Describe your feelings towards the idea of the Intelligence Test and why you think it was instated.”

I thought for a moment and decided that I would say exactly what the camp leader wanted to hear.

“I think that the idea of an Intelligence Test is really quite brilliant, because it has the capability to weed out the intellectual weak-links in the chain of people at this camp.  When all the weak spots are gone, the chain in indestructible.  I think that the Intelligence Test was instated for exactly that reason.”

The screen went blank again, but did not display a result message as it had after the previous two tests.

The screen illuminated again, and the directions for the fourth test were displayed.

“Press in order as fast as you can. Repeat until time is up.”

There were three identical buttons on the screen.  There was no visible order or pattern to speak of.  Panicking, I mashed the buttons on the screen with my hands, hoping to hit them the right way.  The screen soon went blank again.  The woman’s voice came on and said, “The test is now over.  Thank you for your time.  You may exit the way you came in.  Tests can be stressful, so head over to the cafeteria for a slice of cake as your reward.”

As I exited the building, past the Cart loading area, my old friends met me outside the building.  “How’d it go?” they asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I think I did well, but I’m not sure.  But I know I did better than the man who went before me, so at least I’ll live to see tomorrow.”

dream #12

My family and I are at a barbecue buffet restaurant, sitting outside on the porch area. It’s a down-home type of restaurant, so the table is just a long picnic table meant to seat two or three parties at once. The party, whose place is next to us at the table is outside smoking and mingling, waiting for their food to come. Two red-headed freckled kids from the party come in to see if there are enough places set at the table for all of the people their group.

“Let’s see here, who do we have…” one of the kids begins.  “We’ve got me and you,” he says, pointing to the other kid. “We’ve got my mom and dad, your mom and dad, my brother…”

“Tutti Fruity,” says the other kid.  “Don’t forget Tutti Fruity!”  They both laugh.

“How could we ever forget Tutti Fruity?” the first kid says incredulously.

“Shut up!  Stop calling my Tutti Fruity!” a voice says.

I look around to see who had said it.  My eyes fall upon a boy walking through the porch door, coming in to beat his offenders to a pulp.  But he is not just a boy.  It is painfully evident that he is trying to pass himself off as a girl.  He has a buzz cut with a long rat tail, and is wearing a bra that has been stuffed with tissue paper.  There is a slight hint of feminintiy in his face, but not enough to fool anyone.  He is wearing a light blue spaghetti-strap shirt.

The original two boys start laughing and run to the back of the porch.

“Get back here, GET BACK HERE!” the boy with the rat tail says.

“Tutti Fruity, Tutti Fruity, Tutti Fruity!” the boys chant as they burst into roaring laughter.  The boy with the rat tail continues to chase them, until one of the parents pokes their heads into the porch door and yells at them to stop.