Dream

I don't dream a lot. Or, rather, I don't remember them very often. I find dreams fascinating--a mix of recent events and deep memories and (seemingly) pure randomness.

Since I think that one of my prime abilities is to take nonsense and restate it as a pattern (or to take nonsense and restate it as slightly more jargon-laden nonsense), I enjoy hearing about my friends' dreams and then theorizing what they were dreaming about. Right? Way off base? It doesn't matter. It's issue spotting without a teacher's guide.

I tend not to analyze my own dreams, though, even if I remember them. I fear that I might convince myself that what I'm half-jokingly claiming that they mean is actually what they meant. When, in fact, I tend to think dreams are like private versions of made for TV movies that we just catch the middle of.

In any case, I had a dream recently.

I was standing in a bar/restaurant. It was in California. Not a specific bar/restaurant, and I couldn't, like, see the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hollywood sign to indicate it was California, but I just KNEW it. You know?

I also knew that I had run into a guy's car earlier that day. I knew I was at fault.

OK. So. I was there. My best friend growing up, Big Cow, was there. And a female... entity... was there. A woman, but not a specific woman, although it didn't seem odd that a woman entity that was familiar to me but that didn't have a specific form was in the booth near me.

Anyway, she and Big Cow were sitting in a booth (not together, but on opposite sides). I was standing near the booth, and I was having a conversation. I was talking to a muscle-bound man who was extremely agitated... agitated that I had run into his car's bumper.

He (with his large friend lurking in the background) kept insisting that I owed him $3200. That seemed a bit steep for me, given I only damaged his bumper, and while I knew I was at fault AND I knew he could beat me up, I still didn't want to pay him that money, or outwardly lie.

So our conversation went something like this:

Him: You need to pay up.
Me: Yes, I do need to take responsibility.
Him: $3200.
Me: I will definitely pay an appropriate amount.
Him: You are gonna pay me $3200, right?
Me: Trust me: you'll get a check for repairs when I get home.

Haha. He kept calling me on it, and I kept trying to dance around it. I think we shook hands at one point, and he had a very firm grip. I think he had a New York accent, too, which is weird given we were in California.

I made eye contact with the female entity sometimes but she was totally uninterested (not uninteresting, of course, but uninterested). I don't remember ever even looking at Big Cow, although I remember thinking that if I got into a fight he wouldn't be much help in spite of being a very big guy himself.

I woke up. I thought it exceedingly odd. I decided to remember it, so I focused on the events in the dream and I typed them up (in a very similar form to the italicized, above). It didn't make sense to me.

But then it did. I hate to admit it that a dream at all influenced my real life (that's crazy, right?) but in this case, it sort of did.

Here we are, less than a week later. And I broke up with my girlfriend tonight.

I can connect the dots, between my dream and that decision, but... I think I'll keep it to myself. I'm sorry. For so many things, I'm sorry, of course. But for not connecting the dots for you: I'm sorry.