Sleeping for a stretch of twelve hours brings a plethora of dreams:
I sit talking with my roommates on a huge hide-a-bed in our dorm room. Our PC walks in with a serious look on his face. He quickly finds the huge pile of uncheckable DVDs on the shelf, the M rated games laying all over the floor, the celebrity magazines and posters all over the walls, and all the rap music in my itunes library. BUSTED!!!! I can’t remember having any of these things in my room. I try to explain this to him, but he leaves quickly, grimacing threateningly as he goes.
Checking into BJU at the beginning of the semester. Much confusion and confrontation in regards to check-in regulations. Mrs. Vick tries to help us as much as she can. We remember a tunnel at the back of the Alumni building made up of a labyrinth of school halls and un-openable doors, seeming to stretch to infinity, that we used to play in: an exact replica of the mines of Moria. We go to see it, but all that is left is a vast empty gym, where a new structure of caves is being constructed with plywood, named “The Sword-Room” obviously a less frightening, more child friendly replica of a castle. Not half as cool. We miss the Labyrinth.
Unable to check into our rooms, we decide to go to McDonalds. I lag behind and miss my ride. A classic red phone booth pulls up, piloted by none other than “Shaun of The Dead’s” own Simon Pegg, dressed in a Knight Bus uniform. John Lithgow and Mos Def are also along for the ride. We speed down the highway at a ridiculous rate. Mos Def supplies ebonic shrieks of comic relief. We miss McDonalds, hit a bump and fly into the air, smashing into the glass wall of an opulent mall. We fall two stories onto the hard marble floor. Lithgrow and Def miss the top level and fall all the way down to the ground level. Simon and I peer over the edge, afraid of what we will see. The rest of the people in the mall freeze, breathless. Lithgrow scrammbles to his feet. He’s alive and relatively unharmed! But what about Mos Def? “He’s also OK!” a news reporter announces happily from the scene, as our captive audience bursts into applause.
I drive an unidentified invisible vehicle through an overcrowded Gurnee Mills, approaching the food court. A cousin hands me a car phone. On the other end is David Letterman and Fiona Apple. I’m told I’m “on the air” and “What question do you have for Fiona caller?” I stutter, first verifying who I’m talking to, then trying to think of something to say. “Hi Fiona, My sister loves you. Could you say hi to Kristin?” “Hi Kristin!” she bubbles back. Am I talking to Apple, or is this Regina Spektor? I swerve to avoid an Annie’s Pretzels stand. The cousins pile out, along with my brothers. We spend a long time trying to figure out what to order at the McDonalds. As we sit down, awaiting our blueberry slushies and chocolate chip cookies, Kristin shows up. I tell her excitedly what I said to Regina. Kristin doesn’t seem surprised. She smirks a little. “I was on the phone all morning calling the show. I must have used five different accents!” she says. Oh well!
We’re back home in Waukegan. All of my DVDs are arranged on my blue shelf, along with many more I’ve never seen. Why are we back? Didn’t we move? David comes in and greet me. He grabs a Terminator DVD and heads to the basement. I enter the kitchen. Mom and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table. Mom informs me that we are on vacation and that the new owner is letting us borrow the house for a week. I ask about the return of the furniture. Dad tells me that we moved some of it back so we’d feel more comfortable. Hmmm.
I wake up after another few random streams of consciousness ping my brain. Nothing else sticks though.