dream

Imagine this: one day you're driving, everything is normal, and all of a sudden, you find yourself, with no explanation, in the middle of a large body of water. You're still in the driver's seat, your seatbelt is buckled, the radio is still playing; in fact, your feet haven't even gotten wet yet. Everything is operating as normal, except that your car is in the middle of a body of water, floating, somehow. But you know this can't last, at least not for very long. The only thing you really can seem to do is turn the steering wheel, and in some warped way make the car go forward and backward in a circular kind of desperation. There are people all around you in boats, the happy kind of boats that signify everything on this body of water seems to be operating normally, as it should be. And yet, you call out, you turn the radio down, you dim your headlights and then put them back up to full brightness, desperately trying to call attention to the situation of imminent disaster in which you are currently immersed. No one notices. 

Eventually, you discover the sort of ramp that you apparently had used to drive yourself into this body of water in the first place. You turn the car that way, aim yourself directly at that ramp, pray for your luck to go far enough to let you drive right out of this strange situation, as the knowledge that your car is not amphibious has started to become obvious--your feet are getting wet. 

Of course you can't just drive out; that would be too easy. When you try to accelerate up the ramp onto dry land, your car's wheels spin loyally, but with nothing on which to gain traction, they act as useless as oars on a raft in the middle of the ocean. At the last possible moment, as you cry out once again, wondering why not a single person seems to be paying attention to you, a kind stranger offers some help from the dry land at the top of the ramp. Together, you and the kind stranger operate in seamless teamwork to get your car out of the water and up the ramp to the dirt road above. Your relief is immediate--you thank him profusely and send him on his way before even thinking to check that your car is in working order after being driven for several minutes in a deep body of water. You drive a few feet, the scenery changes entirely, and on the edge of a forest you discover that not one, but all four of your tires are flat. Well, you tell yourself, at least this is a problem less dire than when the car was somehow floating in a large body of water. You start dialing a number on the cell phone that has been miraculously forgotten through this entire ordeal, hoping for another easy fix to a weird, seemingly impossible problem. 

And then you wake up.