Residential Preserve

It's late at night and I'm walking down a residential street in a crisp white naval officer's uniform. I'm walking behind a woman dressed the same way (in slacks, not a skirt). She's about average height, with thick, dark hair that is cut short. The residential area we are walking through is a preserve, like a nature preserve, but it's all residential. We're not exactly sneaking, but we shouldn't be there, and we'll be arrested if the police catch us.

We cross a bridge over Emmet Street where the walking bridge to Ruffner Hall is, but it's an automotive bridge, not a walking bridge. We come to a large, single story building on our left (which is not Ruffner Hall). We go around the left side of the building. There's a wide ledge running along side the building, with a railing of square pipes in a rectangular pattern. As we go along the ledge the ground drops away and we can see that the building is several stories tall. The woman I am with has gotten ahead of me. I can see in the windows of the building and we are walking past a college class room. The woman goes into the class room through a door at the end of the ledge, and gets a note from the teacher. She comes back out as I get to the end of the ledge and we start to climb down the building. The ledges and the railing make it really easy.

We go down about four or five stories and then go into a room full of naval uniform hats. We each get a hat matching our uniform, and the woman start to fill out a form authorizing us to take the hats and go into the building. There is a tall black man who is approving the forms while others wait behind us. He is questioning the woman about mistakes on the form. She is blustering her way through it good-naturedly, saying things like "You think so?" and "Is that right?" Finally he okays the form and leaves. After he does, another woman who was waiting says she noticed another place where we filled out the form wrong. I think about passing it off with a joke about Al-Queda, but then figure that mentioning Al-Queda will make her security conscious and she'll report us.

I put on my black army jacket and we walk out into the hall. Then we go out a door and we're in the back yard at Tandem, walking toward that new building with the auditorium. I start to get nervous, thinking that someone will notice the discrepancy between my army jacket and my naval uniform. That's when I realize I don't have a back story prepped in case we are questioned. I think about passing myself off as on detached duty under Major Rolf Huntsman out of Fort Bragg, hoping they don't notice that I pulled the name Huntsman out of recent political news (the name Rolf comes from a Chess writer). But then I realize that I don't know if Fort Bragg is even an Army base, much less active. Then the alarm goes off and I wake up.

The Me Who

I was at Tandem, walking out into the parking lot (it was the wrong parking lot and road entirely, but was no place specific). Obama had decided to drop out of the presidential race, and I had been tapped to take his place. I was going over demographics in my head, trying to figure out who I would get for my VP running mate. As I was figuring that I probably couldn't get away with a black woman, I got to my car. My cell phone rang as I was getting in. It was some guy from the Democratic party. He told me they hadn't announced yet, and that my mom was freaking out about the whole thing. I told him to go ahead and announce.

"That will calm her down?" he asked.

"No, but it will smack her in the face with the reality of it enough to shut her up."

Then he said I'd probably have to start wearing suits. I looked down at my t-shirt, black jeans, and chucks and said that I was a Quaker and they would just have to get used to it. By then I was driving out of the parking lot, which they were getting ready to repaint. They had put up traffic cones marking the old lines. I kept hitting the traffic cones, even though I was trying to avoid them. Eventually I got out of the parking lot and came up to the light, where I got in the right hand left turn lane, with a purple, crotch-rocket motorcycle (the rider had a matching helmet) on my left. When the light turns green I have trouble accelerating. I realize I'm in third gear, but before I can shift into first I stall out in the middle of the intersection. I look over and see that the motorcycle next to me has stalled out too. I turn the ignitions, and even though there is no key in the ignition it starts up. I'm still having trouble accelerating. In the street I'm turning onto there is a line of people making a left turn towards me from the parking lot behind Slice of Olde Town (a pizza joint in Gaithersburg). Some of them are pedestrians. Two of them are old, fat white men in leather and facial hair, walking their motorcycles (hogs this time). We manage to maneuver around each other and I pull up at another stop light, the square red brick building of Slice of Olde Town on my right with its windows reflecting the clear blue sky.

As I wake up I'm thinking that the old fat guys with the motorcycles were famous, and I should have recognized them.

The Random Navy

I'm in Random Row having dinner with several older people who are friends of my mom's. However, Random Row is in the Vinegar Hill McDonald's. I'm talking to one really old lady in particular who taught me Japanese religion in grade school. We're looking through a small gift bag of stuff from my trip to Japan in middle school. We just got it out of my mom's attic.

In the bag are two not very expensive gemstone hook-style earrings on cards, one green and one brown. I remember that there is one of each left because I gave the other ones to my girlfriend at the time, who had only one ear pierced. We also find two cards the old lady sent to me while I was in Japan. One is sort of off-green, with a tan page attached to the front that has a black bamboo design painted on it. Neither of us can make sense of what it says. I shyly admit to the lady that I couldn't make sense of it at the time either, and that I had thought it was evidence that she was going senile, seeing as she was really old even back then.

I get up and move to the side of the restaurant that is facing Preston Avenue, or would be if there were any windows to face out of. To get there I have to go up three steps, made out of darkly stained wood like everything else in the restaurant. I sit down with a white guy in his 40s. He's got a round, shaved head and is wearing a dark bomber jacket.

Agent Gibbs from NCIS walks in the back door with another naval officer. All of the naval personnel in the restaurant stand up, salute, and start screeching really loudly. Agent Gibbs walks up to our table. I tell him that I'm new to NCIS and I don't what the correct protocol is. He just looks at me with a little expectant smile on his face. So I stand up, salute, and start screeching at the top of my lungs. I'm doing this face to face with a younger, square faced black guy. We're standing there screeching at each other, staring into each others' faces.

When the screeching is done I sit down to have lunch with Gibbs, the guy he walked in with, and the guy in the bomber jacket. I'm the lowest ranking person at the table, and they don't really pay a lot of attention to me. The booth is weird, with the bench on my side extending into the wall and forming a cubby about three feet deep. I shove all of our jackets in there.

After lunch I walk through the door facing Preston Ave., and walk around the corner of the building to the door facing 5th St. By the time I get back in Gibbs and the others have already left, but there is a young, white trash navy cadet greedily going through a gift bag that I realize Gibbs meant for the both of us. It has gray Civil War style caps with black rubber attached and cut away in cool, tattoo-style designs. I get real angry, bunch up my fists, walk toward the cadet, and wake up.

This dream was posted one day late. It happened Thursday, January 20th