the dream

I usually don't remember dreams, but since I'm posting anonymously anyway, WTF: I had 2 dreams back-to-back last night, the second one was kind of a nightmare, and I woke up screaming, and that's the only reason I remember either dream. I think they were kind of related, but I'm not sure. Here it goes; dream number one:

My wife and I are walking through the downtown area of our hometown. It's later in life for both of us, because we were both grey and I remember thinking while I was holding her hand that it seemed like just yesterday that we were getting woke up in the middle of the night by a screaming baby who was teething, and now they're all out of the house. I got the distinct impression that we were poor, as we were walking through downtown, and my wife's idea of walking, is from the front door, to the car door, so chances are good that in the dream, we didn't have a car.

In the dream, I was looking for a highschool friend of mine. I recognized the face of a guy who I went to highschool with [for real]. It didn't look like this guy aged much from highschool, even though I remember when we were in highschool, the guy looked like a junior high school student. In real life I only know his first name, and I never talked to him in highschool.

This guy's name is Tom. [For real.] In the dream, I asked Tom if he has seen the guy I was looking for. (I knew that Tom and the guy I was looking for, knew of eachother in highscool, and even though it was a long shot, I thought it was worth a try.) [In real life, I have no idea what Tom does, and I was surprised that he even appeared in my dream, as I only saw him walking through the hallways in highschool, but we had friends who were mutual acquaintences, but I seriously never talked to him in highschool.]

In the dream, we were talking in Tom's NAPA autoparts franchise. Even though it was in a bad part of town and on the ground floor of a rickety, old building that's been there since dirt, the interior of the store was clean, bright, modern and very well stocked.

Tom and I chit-chatted about high school. I could tell he had no idea who the hell I was, but I was enjoying laying on the "guilt trip" that I know I go through, when I'm in a similar situation. (You know, when you just feel awful that you have no idea who you're talking to, but you feel an obligation that maybe you should, since they know who you are, and you hope the "name" thing never comes up?)

I said, "Well, I'm glad you're doing so well! This certainly is a nice store." He said, "This may look nice, but the NAPA franchise just breaks even. The real cash cow is next door. The NAPA franchise brings tons of traffic to this building because of my low prices, that people eventually notice what's next door. People think they're separate businesses, but they're not. Go ahead and take a look."

He was opening a door behind the counter in the NAPA store, that customers don't have access to. This door opened up to the business next door, and was the only access from the NAPA franchise. I walked through. It was a freakin' used thermos store. That's right! It was the Goodwill of used thermoses! There were thermoses of every shape and size. There were even ceramic coffee caraffes with screw-on lids from other countries. The ceramic ones looked Middle-Eastern. I said, "This is your money maker?" and he said, "You wouldn't believe the margins on this crap! People practically give me these thermoses, and I sell them for a minimum of $20! All I do, is run them through a dishwasher."

I had to admit: the thermos store certainly lacked the ambiance of the NAPA franchise. It was dark, the shelves were ancient and probably cheap [tacky] when they were originally made, and the floors were dirty and in desparate need of mopping. Merchandise was dissheveled and in no particular order, and alot of the thermoses were tilted, leaning against eachother. It was a mess, but you could tell that this store was Tom's pride and joy.

That was the end of the dream number one. Dream number two:

In this dream, my wife and I were laying in bed. She was in a trance and couldn't be woken. She had the heel of her left leg on my right nut. Seriously. In the dream, I called her name to wake her up, and she, in her trance, had this annoyed look on her face. I grabbed her ankle to get her heel off my nether region, and her face got an even more annoyed look, and she dug her heel in harder, but her eyes never opened, and she was still in this trance.

I took my hand off her ankle and she let up, so her heel had the same amount of pressure on me before I tried to take her ankle off, but there was no sign she was going to take her heel off, or awake from her trance. I was starting to get weak from the pain, but I didn't know what to do.

I started yelling her name. I yelled over and over, each time getting louder and louder, until I actually woke up from the sound of my voice yelling out her name for real. At this point, I was awake for real, and I looked over at her, and she had her eyes closed just like in the dream, fast asleep.

The bonus for me? Two of them! The pain was only "dream" pain, and it was five minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. There was no threat of me sleeping in this morning!

That was it.