That's what friends are for

In a foreign city, Paris or Amsterdam, I walk through what looks like a bad part of town. There are dark cobblestone streets. I come across two bars or clubs on either side of an alley. On the outer walls of each is a plaque or painted sign that says something about not bringing large pipes or bongs (but it was a different word) inside the establishment. I turn on the next corner and see a few people walking in and out of apartment buildings. There is more sunlight, but large metal gates blocking access to the courtyards of the buildings. I wind up in a crowded square. I recognize someone in the crowd. Then I start seeing a bunch of people I know from high school. I call some guy John, but I don’t actually know him. I see Suzanne across the way, then several others. I am so surprised and excited, that I lose Brooke in the crowd. I follow George Lamb to a tent full of electronics – speakers, wires and computers or broadcast equipment. A man is working on the other side of a bank of machines. I get caught up in some wires and the tape from a VHS cassette wraps around my neck. I struggle but can’t get loose. George gets it off me. Then we walk down a dirt hill. I kick over a large bottle about 3 feet high in front of me. It falls forward and water and some change spill out on the dusty hillside. I grab the bottle and take to replace it upright in place. I realize it looks like my old giant coke bottle bank. I can’t find a level spot where the bottle used to be, so I move it a few feet down the hill and set it on what turns out to be a polished stone plaque of compass directions covered in a thin layer of dirt. I walk down the hill and onto a road.
I walk out to the railing of the inside of a mall, I take an elevator down to the bottom floor. There is a dance club in the middle of the food court.

A family of fat people are at a dock. The parents are super obese, but their children are still able to move around. The kids get in the water and start climbing onto to large torpedo shaped rafts tied behind a large ski boat. The boy says something about pinning the rope of raft under another piece. I point out the proper place to tie it off. Then the boat is flying through the water or a wide river or narrow lake. The rafts are pulled behind like a water-skier. The boat makes a sudden sweeping turn in front of a large rock face of a sharp boulder or cliff. I am hanging on to one of the ropes trailing behind the boat, flying through the air. My feet barely miss hitting the rock as the boat makes it’s turn. The fat people are behind me, they haven’t followed the boat through its turn yet. I pull in rope, it is a struggle, but I haul in enough slack to keep them from smacking into the rock.

I am in my Arkansas apartment listening to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. But it is on the radio not the TV. The crowd is charting something and when they stop, I hear Sam and her friend from Disney and they are chanting “Fernt, Fernt, Fernt.” I get out of bed and call Paul to tell him about it.