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