Fever Dreams

Yesterday, I think I started to recover from my cold.

Last night, I must have been doing a lot of thrashing in my sleep, because the bed was a wreck when I awoke. I remembered an episodic dream featuring lots of DMTC folks, where I repeatedly swung from arrogant over-confidence, to panic, in a matter of seconds.

First, I dreamt I was walking in my Curtis Park neighborhood in Sacramento, looking at nice, sidewalk floral arrangements, cleverly designed by Thomas L. I walked all the way to City College looking at floral arrangements. Then, night fell.

I awoke in a crowded and dusty photo lab. It was 6 a.m., and Martin L., Giorggio S., and I were inside a student union building, getting ready to go to work. My job was to replace Scott G. for the day, in his regular job of being a poolside janitor.

Decked out in my Speedoes, I mopped all around the pool. There was a band of tape at the pool's edge, apparently there to keep athletes from losing their footing. Nevertheless, with little effort, soap-and-water sufficed to remove the tape. The tape was so easy to remove I couldn't understand why Scott G. hadn't removed all the tape before. So, shaking my head at Scott's lapses, I removed all the tape.

It was now sunset, and time to remove the magic pickup truck from the ocean (I hadn't realized until then that Sacramento was a coastal location!) The pickup truck had this remarkable property of being able to drive directly the on water - right on the tires! - but the nightly effort to remove it onshore was burdensome. So, Rick P. designed this apparatus to guide the pickup ashore. The apparatus consisted of a wooden plank sitting on top of an aluminum ladder, which would guide the driver's side tires up and onto a pier. Plus ropes - lots of ropes!

I sat in the bed of the pickup truck as people on the pier pulled the pickup truck up the guide, but then something went terribly wrong. The end of the aluminum ladder slipped from the edge of the pier. With the pickup's front tire now resting entirely on the end of the poorly-supported plank, the back end of the plank veered crazily upwards from the track provided by the aluminum ladder. I jumped into the water in order to hold the plank and the aluminum ladder together, which I could only do with the most powerful abdominal crunch of all time. With Jocelyn P. on the pier shouting "Abs!" I tried, and tried, and ....

Suddenly, I was back in my Curtis Park neighborhood again. I had inherited the title of one of the swankier houses in the neighborhood upon divorce (because, as lawyers all know, it is only upon divorce that husbands gain full title to property once held by the wife's father).

There was only one challenge in my new domain: a short-sighted raccoon that kept bumping into me when I walked barefoot across the lawn. The raccoon began nibbling on my toes, began giggling, and suddenly transformed into a giant, naked mole rat the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. I began to freak out, and ....

At that point, I finally awoke, drenched in sweat.

I don't have colds and fevers very often, which is just as well. People at the pool, in particular, can do without my absurd over-confidence....