January 5th, 2008
Sunny Spring/Summery day, and I'm jogging/running on a high school track thinking, "That woman from work¹ was right! The track is much softer under the feet than gravel or concrete!" As I make my way around, I see more and more students sitting on blocks of hay and little rows of bleachers around the track. Inside the track ring are activities like face-painting and a guy with a lot of balloons, and suddenly there's a fair going on around me and the track has a few built-in obsticles for the students. There are slightly muddy ramps that are pretty shallow and lead up to mud-hurdles that are only 3' high, and I decide it'll be fun to try to jump the dirt-hurdle, but also feel I'd be embarrassed a little if a lot of people saw me slip or trip over it. Of course, I try to run up the little ramp, but it's so slippery that I spin around and fall up the ramp backwards and as I'm (apparently) wearing a little hoody, it gets caked and filled with slimy dirt.
After getting up, my neice, Ivy (who's almost 9), came over to me, took my hand, and walked around the track with me, while weaving between the waves of kids wandering around the field. I was clean again, and looked down to see Ivy taking off her Saltwater sandals. I suggested she put them back on, because the ground could scuff her feet and they'd be more comfortable with sandals on them. She casually refused and kept us walking around (less following the track and more wandering around the students now). A teenage girl walks up to me and tells me that a boy was asking if I was (first and last name here), and was I here to check up on him. I smile a little, feeling kind of flattered that a boy mistook me as someone he was interested in, but shook my head and said, "Nope, sorry!"
We're more in the grassy field now, and I notice Ivy's taken to hopping on one foot, so I stop and ask her if she's hurt. She lifts her right foot and shows me a fairly big (healing) scratch on the sole of it. I then tell Ivy that it's not an option - she needs to wear her sandals to protect her feet, because she's obviously uncomfortable - and this time she makes a fuss, looks at me and says, "F*ck no! I'm not putting the sandals on!" First I'm totally surprised that she said the "F"-word, then I'm upset that she's being so rudely disagreeable, so I squeeze her hand harder than I needed to, and then stopped myself because I realised it would hurt her and I hate the idea that I would hurt someone, especially a little kid. She remains ornery, so I look around for my brother.
Amongst the students are a few of my brother's friends (who are high school age in my dream) and my brother is with them chatting happily. I get his attention by calling him and say, "Nick, I need to have a serious talk with you." He acknowledges and comes over, and Ivy wanders around behind me. I tell him about what Ivy said, and immediately he replied with, "Well yeah, it's because I said it earlier today." I'm about to ask why he said it, when he continues, "Tiffany's been gone. She hasn't been home in three days, and I don't know where she is." Tiffany's definately not the type to just disappear so I started thinking of things that might've come up like someone in the family being ill or something urgent, and then I notice Nick's holding a white rectangular box of donuts and I say something crude so I can distract him long enough to snatch the box from him. It works and we joke around with eachother and I open the box to find big donuts with light-pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles, take the biggest one, and shove it in my mouth.
I don't know how it transitions, but I'm suddenly in my apartment. On TV I see a man (Obama², apparently) sitting next to another man on a stage of five individuals being interviewed, and immediately he reaches out and tries to strangle the man next to him with his hands. Everyone is shocked, but it's been reported that Obama has a mental illness and has random bouts of violence that are out of his control. He had denied it before but it's obvious it's true. Looking away from the TV, I'm standing in the kitchen looking into the living room and Obama and the other interviewees are sitting in a half-circle in chairs, facing me. They're all talking and it happens in front of me: Obama calmly talking, then immediately reaching over and trying to strangle the man next to him. Everyone is shocked and tries to stop him, and I dash over and ask Obama why he's doing it. He suddenly calms down and looks a little ashamed, but still slightly shielded, and he finally admits to his problem and discusses it a little with everyone.
The panel then start chatting with eachother, Obama included, and I make my way over to my kitchen again, and there's an ancient bag of Halloween candy on my counter that an old woman left there. I vaguely remember her putting it there and telling me a silly story about obtaining it when she was a child. She then leaves it for me, and I start to eat the little bite-sized Snickers from inside, one after another, dropping the wrappers on the counter.
Another random transition and there's a 6" gentleman (a mix between Judge Reinhold, and Michael Keaton) in a suit, and he has a wooden helo-propeller³ coming from the back of his jacket, and he's propelling his way down from a tiny window from atop a very large door. There's a large sitting fan that's blowing towards him and an over-head fan twirling above him, so he tries to find a pattern in the cross-breezes so he can make it down more easily, instead of being blown in odd circles. He slowly figures it out, and makes his way down safely.
As the man starts to land somewhere (on a green couch, maybe?), there's a man who looks a LOT like Judge Reinhold, who's hosting a contest on the radio, and I'm being quizzed by him. We're sitting in a brown carpeted, wood-panelled room that's just larger than a closet. It seems a philosopher/poet has posed a question he's already made an answer to, and listeners have to try to solve his riddle: "A man in his lifetime will have three homes/cabins. How many rooms will he have in each home/cabin?" Immediately I realise it's three rooms in the first one (his room, his wife's room, and their child's room), two rooms in his next home (his room and his wife's room, as the child has grown up and left the house), and the third has only one room (the man is now alone since his wife has passed on). I'm right, and Judge isn't very pleased that I figured it out so quickly - and while I should be happy, I'm left feeling sad about the man and how he's left alone - puzzle or not.
Now I'm upstairs at my old house, the last one my family and I lived in together (the room isn't defined yet, and is fairly open and random). I get a call on my cellphone from my best friend, Kira, and I can hear someone in the background getting excited about the rain outside, so I look out a window facing the cul-de-sac we live on, and the rain is silver and shimmery, and falling in long rows, instead of in random dropplets. Actual, vertical, sheets of almost unreal-looking rain are falling and it's incredibly pretty, so I run downstairs with Kira still on the phone. At the foot of the stairs is the front door, which is already open, and I walk out into the rain.
As soon as I step out of the house and walk down the steps, the rain turns to very large, thick and slightly heavy fluffs of snow. This is how I imagine snow should be! I'm totally elated and am exclaiming my excitement to Kira, and telling her how it JUST changed right in front of me. I start to feel the cold, and I'm barefoot, so I go back inside and run upstairs to put on socks and shoes. The upstairs is now the way it really was in our house, and I got into my room, and sit on the floor to put on some socks and shoes - which are already scattered in front of my already open closet. As I'm fumbling with the socks, I notice a kid in my room who's a mix between my supervisor's son, and Zero from the movie "Holes". I can't remember what he's telling me, but he ends with, "You saw my father, right? You remember him?"
I'm in a small, warm, and cozy log cabin. It's one room, a kitchen and living room sharing the space. All hardwood floors, and there are quilts over the sofas, and hanging from the walls adding to the cozy feeling. In a rocking chair behind me is an old African-American man with thin white hair and glasses, and he's talking to me about how he hates dusting and since he's alone now, he doesn't need three pairs of glasses now, just his 'water glasses' (so he can see how clean the floor is when he mops) and his regular glasses which he's wearing. "Ah jus' need mah watah glasses, so's I can see when the flo' shines!" (or something of the like). I smile, and enjoy his company, telling him about the snow I saw, and how I'm in love with the weather. Suddenly, I see out the kitchen window, and the snow has become rain. I glance away for a moment, and when I look back there's a few inches of water on the ground. I'm surprised and look back at the man, telling him how the rain is getting heavy, and when I look back out the window, the water is rising so fast I can see it happening - almost an inch every few seconds. The water is rising so fast I know we have no time to get out, and then I think of Kira and wonder if she's inside or outside.
Without another thought, I take in as much air as possible and hold my head up and the water is already past my chest and almost to my face. I kind of accepted I would be submerged and could possibly wait to see if the water would come back down as quickly as it had risen, but figured I had at least a little possibilty of making it out if I had to. I still wondered if Kira had made it out of where she was, but at the rate the water was rising, she wouldn't have anything to hold onto when she got tired of swimming - and I realised that's why I hadn't swam anywhere... even if I did get out... where would I go?
The water was to my lips and it actually hesitated for a moment - enough time for me to take in one more breath so my lungs are completely full - and then the man and I are completely under water and floating up to the celeing. I don't see the man, but I know he's behind me and I'm not worried because I know he's calm.
Immediately I'm filled with shock, because I know it doesn't matter how much air I have in my lungs. I'll have to let it out, and then it'll be too late. I let out a little air, because I feel like I'm going to burst, and suddenly I think,
"I'm going to drown."
¹ The woman from work is a guest who comes in for sammiches a few days a week. Last night we talked about running and how she prefers running on a track because it's more easy on your joints than hard concrete (not much better, but a little!), and I learned she's also a P.E. teacher.
² I actually know next-to-nothing about Obama. I know what he looks like, and have a few friends who are really hopeful that he's elected. I don't know why I dreamt about him, and have no subconscious opinions.
³ I have a game, Chibi Robo, and you play a cute little robot who has to plug into outlets to charge his battery as he runs around using different tools to help people and clean up everything around him. He looks like this:
...and one of the first tools you obtain is a propeller that pops up out of his head. There's a part in the game where you have to get into a bedroom, and have to climb up a dangly chime by the door to reach a little window at the top. When you go through the window, you have to float your way down into the room via propeller and can spiral around as you decend. It's really adorable!
· The old man talking about hating dusting, and preferring mopping must've come from last night at work. Before I left I told William (the Plaid Guy for the night) that he seemed to be busy with Spring Cleaning already (he was running around taking the drink machines apart and cleaning them out), and how I love to clean most stuff, but the one thing I hated to do as a kid was dusting. Then I almost left, and remembered I forgot to mop, so I ran back behind the counter at Subway and mopped the floor before leaving for home.
~
Aside from those assumptions as to why I dreamt what I did, I absolutely am in love with weather, and am completely fascinated by it. I've taken swimming lessons as a kid, and am comfortable with it (though I have a hard time not having to plug my nose when I go underwater) - so I don't know why I almost drowned and was so terrified.
