Proper

Wearing a tux, walking up a flight of stairs to some event like a banquet. Coming down the stairs are a swarm of eighth graders leaving a school dance. I step outside and kids are sitting in perfectly straight rows and columns on the stone entryway and steps leading up to the courthouse-like building. All the kids are wearing plain, white dress shirts.

The creek behind our house growing up, but it is a little deeper in spots. I am with something else looking for something in the water. We don’t find it, but I see several golf balls on the bottom around one spot. Leaning over to look, I slip off a steep bank and fall in. I land on my feet and since my shoes and pants legs are already wet, I decide to pick up the golf balls. That’s when I notice that the steep bank I fell off of is actually a mattress with several layers of old leaves, sticks and cut grass piled on top. I lift the mattress and underneath is a futon with a box of bead and necklaces sitting on top of it. The futon looks clean and new. I pick up the box and hand to the person I am with that is still on shore. Then I see stacks of boxes to the side and behind the futon. It seems they were stored or hidden in an underground cave or room in the hillside.

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A kid is talking to his grandfather as they are walking on a farm. The kid is trying to learn about his grandfather’s experience in the war. A large truck pulls up on a dirt road, there is a large glass box attached to the side of the truck that contains a recording studio. The boy is convincing his grandfather to do an interview. They enter the box, inside it looks like a front porch with a tree in front. The door of the porch leads into the back of the truck. The boy sits in a swing. He realizes that his grandfather doesn’t want to do any interview when he sees the look on his face. He motions for his grandfather to sit in another swing, then pulls or cuts a cord or rope. Both swings fly into the air. They are attached on opposite sides of a rope hanging over a bar or tree branch. The kid knows someone will be coming as starts shutting a window next to the door. As the swings climb upwards out of reach, the kids closes the window by letting slack slide from two ropes. The window closes just as a person walks through the back of the truck toward the screen door that leads out onto the porch.

Hail me

Standing in a hotel room looking out the window at muddy fields in every direction several stories below. I see Mom and Dad riding mountain bikes along a road winding away from the hotel. Dad swerves off onto a path that cuts back towards the hotel and Mom follows close behind him. I see that mud is splattering off their tires and up their backs. I pull on a grubby pair of cut off jean shorts and look for an old t-shirt so that I can join them. But instead of hopping on a bike, I stand in the hotel lobby and tell them that I have a job interview at Moroch/Leo Burnett. I get into a cab and head to the interview. The cab drives past a convenient store/gas station and I watch a group of girls out front. One is eating an ice cream cone. She looks good in a skirt and crop top, but is too young. She’s probably only in college or maybe even high school. I wonder where we are and what route the cab is taking. I turn to ask and suddenly I am driving the cab just as it runs out of gas. I turn the key in the ignition and the car starts up again. It is suddenly dark outside. I turn the gar around in the grass to backtrack to a different gas station I just passed. The station is behind me on a cross street at a major intersection. I cannot do a U-turn on the street I am on because of a concrete median and barrier dividing the lanes of traffic. So I turn into the grass to turn around and head on the side of the road facing oncoming traffic. I turn to my left to cut across the corner through the grass directly towards the station. As I approach the cross street, I turn further to the left to drive parallel to the cross street. I am now driving in the grass on the wrong side of the cross street. As I straighten the steering wheel to bring the cab parallel to the street, I see Mom and Dad in the headlights. They are jogging and yell at the cab for driving down the wrong side of the road. They don’t realize it is I at first, but they continue yelling when they do.

Lovers

Lane from work and I hook up. Later I approach her about having sex with me again. She rejects my advances by saying “I don’t think Allison would approve.” I wonder what she has to do with it, then I realize that they must be lovers. I wonder how this is possible since Lane is not a lesbian.

Toil and trouble

In an orphanage, it’s a big, creaky building much like an old house. I am my current age, but all the rest of the kids are little kid age. The place is run by a group of witches, that look like the Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy characters from the movie Hocus Pocus. I am upstairs with a group of kids and the witches start chasing us. The kids run down the staircase that winds down several floors and I follow, then stop and turn around. I stand on the stairs ready to fight so that the kids have a chance to get away. But then I jump over the handrail and onto a large pipe across from the rail. The pipe has large brackets ever couple of feet when the pipe changes direction or gets smaller as it descends. I slide down the pipe, past the kids, to the bottom. I have to get out. I jump of the pipe to duck out a back screen door, but see two of the witches outside in the alley catching rats to eat. I turn back inside. When the witches go past, I leave the house and cross the alley to a gravel parking lot. I walk up to a parked van with several punk, tough looking guys. I try to convince them to help me fight the witches. I don’t know if they are normal guys or warlocks.

Worst park ever

I am walking through a large obstacle course. It has the structure of a wooden roller coaster. The obstacles are spread out over where the track would be and are staffed as if it is an amusement park. I see Mr. Clean logos on the pipes running along the side. A girl with a hose tries to spray me, but I duck. Then there is a line of people waiting to complete the next task, throwing a ball through a hole next to a clown face on a hanging tarp. Kids are trying to sneak past people legs to cut in line. Teenagers are paid minimum wage to run the booth and wear the clown outfit.

I pull Stacy out of the road.

Flirting doesn't pay

Me and another guy are walking through a park. We stop at a stone table where some some girls are playing cards. They are piles of chips changing hands with each round. The girls flirt, thinking that the guy I’m with is rich. One asks me something and I reply, “His rich friends don’t give me any money.” Then I say, “what’s your name?” The first girl thinks I’m talking to her and starts to answer. I interrupt, point to her friend and say, “No, I was talking to her.” The first girl is upset, but the second is flattered. People start to gather around, I think they are watching the card game. But they are really starring at me and the guy I’m with as if something is wrong with us. I think that we look normal, but the people are acting like we’re too normal. We slowly walk through the crowd and start to leave the park. When we reach the street, we are arrested by a single detective in an old fashioned cop uniform. He throws us into the back of a truck that has school bus type seats in the back. It is full of other prisoners. The truck starts moving and I fall off the back. I grab a hold of the bumper. And hang on for dear life as the truck tears down streets and around corners. The truck stops in front of a small concert hall. The detective is leading the guy I was with inside, he is wearing a suit. I follow them, but stop because I am wearing prison stripes. The truck that I just let go of, tips over onto its side as if in slow motion and then it flips upside down and slides down the street.

Party time

Picking the strings of an electric guitar with 2 black kids lying on the floor of my childhood room with me. It sounds like I can really play along I am just running my fingers along the strings. I turn the guitar upside down and play the top of the neck instead of the base. It actually sounds pretty cool. Then a tall man enters complaining about the noise or type of music we’re playing. I’m scared of this guy, who is he and how did he get in? He steps into the room from the doorway. Suddenly, Dad is behind him and sneaks his arm around the guy’s neck. Dad’s hand is about to close over the guy’s mouth. It looks as though is going to jerk the guy out the room while gagging and choking him. I am relived that Dad is there to rescue me. Then I see a look of concern on Dad’s face, as if he can’t hurt anyone. He hesitates, then lowers his arm before it even touches the guy. Instead Dad and the guy back out of the room. I don’t hear anything and worry if Dad is ok. I jump up and run into the hall. I see a group of young guys standing by the front door and living room talking to Dad. David and John from Cleveland are trying to explain why they brought their friends to our house. Dad is ready to kick them all out. Then I see another guy on his knees in the hall bathroom, he pukes into the hall toilet. I tell Dad that these guys can’t go anywhere. Dad already realizes that they are no shape to leave. The same guy in the bathroom or another one of them throws up on my shoulder.

Go to a house in a suburb with Sharon. It is her parent’s house (I don’t know if it is her Mom or Dad’s place). There is an old man next door hitting golf balls into a pitching green. The entire lawn of his backyard is covered in golf balls. We go inside and hang out at the kitchen or dining room table. We make plans to go out later, discuss which bar we want to meet up at and when. But there is a TV show on at 9 that I want to watch.

Decorate

Stacy and I are loading my stuff into the back seat of a car. There are two cardboard boxes about the size of the ones that printer paper or maybe cases of bottle beer come in. They are full of liquor and I am nervous about taking them. I try to give them to PJ who is standing in the driveway. But he doesn’t really want to put them in his house. I don’t want to have to put them in my locker at school, so I don’t know what to do with them.

In an office, a man is showing me three instruments that used to catch criminal. He points out the first two and tells me their names. The third he calls a “criminologist” and it is a white rectangle the size of a thick pad of paper with a thin hose coming out of the front top. There is a pen or microphone attached to the other end of the tube. Either by writing or speaking it records something on the pad.

A tall, black guy drops off a large roll of worn paper at my desk. He drops it on the floor behind my chair, we speak for a moment then he walks off. I unroll it and it is the Walt Disney World Pirates of the Caribbean Poster that I used to own. I hang it on the cubical wall behind my chair, then move it to the wall to my right. Someone says cool poster and I look around my cube and see Krissy. My cube wall extends and is also a wall of her cube. Is has the effect of creating a narrow hallway from my desk to hers. I offer to remove the poster, in fact I want to move it because I don’t want to share it with her. But she likes where it is hanging.

Access

On a monorail at an airport. A woman runs up but the door is closed and she misses the train. It pulls out and travels above a freeway. I hear someone say, “Those girls are naked.” I look out the window and there is a large group of girls standing on a rooftop deck. Some are fully dressed and some are topless. They look as if nothing usual is going on. The group is walking towards a stairwell in the center of the deck. My eye goes to one girl wearing nothing but black underwear that almost looks like a swimsuit bottom. Her breasts bounce as she walks. I scan the rest of the group and notice that most of the other girls look much younger or at least have much smaller breasts. I think what if those girls are just kids and look away. As I turn my head, I notice that several of the girls have crossed their arms across their chests.

I am walking along the sidewalk of a town that does not allow liquor to be sold after midnight. I go into a restaurant and ask for a table. The hostess tells me that they are closed and I ask, “What about the back room?”