Dream Log: May 5, 2002

I'm going on a field trip with the rest of my high school. I don't know why I'm there, because I graduated several years ago. Nevertheless, there I am. Somehow, we've managed to charter a Boeing 747 for this trip.

Everything's cool until, for some reason, we run out of fuel midflight. The pilot is forced to set the plane down on a small country road, dodging powerlines and pickup trucks. We land safely, and then we call for help. Unfortunately, we are told that help will not arrive for another few hours, because everyone's off at some anti-crime conference learning how to say no to drugs or something.

The pilot is suddenly extremely tired, and has to get off the plane. While poking around in the cockpit, I discover that the right side fuel tank is completely full, and the only reason we ran out of fuel was because the fuel tank selector had been set only to draw from the left tank. A vote among the students decides that we should take off again and fly to our final destination. Sadly, the pilot is too tired to fly anymore. So everyone wants me to do it.

I've flown 747s a lot in simulators, but never in real life. I tell them this, but still they insist that I fly the plane. So I agree. I get into takeoff position on the road and try to figure out how I'm going to get the plane to lift off precisely between the powerlines that cross the road at regular intervals, but suddenly it's rush hour and there's bumper to bumper traffic and I can't take off.

The dream ends.

First I was shopping. I had one of those little baskets that you use when you're not really going to buy much. Somehow I made Rachel (from Friends) mad, and we started hitting each other on the head with styrofoam sticks and dodging around circular racks of clothes. Then she started throwing things off of the shelf. After some inner conflict, I decided that it was not my responsibility to pick them up. I started to dash for the back of the store for some other things that I needed, then dashed back to retrieve and protect my basket. I was afraid that she would throw extra things in my basket.

I was running first one way, and then another. I ran through forests of mannequins and they turned into for fur coats and then stuffed animals (the wild, dead stuffed animals that they have in museums). I tried to choose the least frightening path, but it got even more complicated by rooms with stone statues of dinosaurs. (I have a history of being insanely frightened of dead stuffed animals and dinosaur reproductions, but to be fair I haven't been around any since I was under ten so I'm probably better now.)

Finally, I chose a huge cavern filled with stone dinosaurs... at least they were not real, and it was dark so the forms weren't as clear and I could pretend they were just big rocks. The terrain was rough, and I began the mode of transport that I often take in my dreams, running and jumping and gliding for a long distance as if I were on the moon. Still, I was frightened. I ran past an ankylosaurus and then I had to go right next to a huge one, like the biggest dinosaur from Jurassic Park III. I took a panicked leap and landed on some huge dinosaur's head. I mentally slammed down a barrier from my fear, and continued.

On the other side of the dinosaur I landed on, I met Cindy Sanders, a girl that I used to go to high school with. I told her how scared I had been, and she said that it had been worth it because she never would have seen where the Grotto was that Ryan had told her about otherwise. I asked, where was it? Then it was as if we zoomed out, and I saw a landing up at the top of the building with a comforting man-made fence.

We continued walking, and soon got to a small door next to a garage-size door. Cindy went to the small door, and said "I think this leads to the grotto." I said, "No, I don't think it does," wondering how she could be so stupid when she had been the one to locate the passage to the grotto at the top of the building on the opposite side. Nevertheless, she went through the small door, and I went through the big door, and I was so glad to be outside in the sunshine.

Then, the phone rang and woke me up, and I stepped on a mirror getting to it. I'm not worried about the luck, though... I've already racked up more than a lifetime of that.