So do you dream?  Do you remember them after you wake up?  Are they in color?  Some of my dreams stay with me through the day, some of them have stayed in my memory for years.  I had one of those this morning that I’ll share, just because it was so odd.

Our family’s truck crash attorney J was driving me and all my siblings  from NYC to Chicago in a van to attend some sort of conference.    Before we left the city we were in a parking lot in a part of the city that was … well… let’s just say photogenic in a grubby and gritty kind of way. J is outside the van on the driver’s side talking to Jo the director of our nonprofit.  My three siblings are scrunched into the back seat.   I’m sitting in the front passenger seat, the door open, and trying to get my camera to turn on to take a picture of a building and the debris around it that actually are in some really beautiful colors, when a big and old cadillac convertible shows up, stuffed full of really big guys and they are mumbling about some white bxxxx taking pictures, and suddenly I’m feeling really threatened and I tell J to stop talking to Jo  and lets get going.

“Good idea” says J and he gets in the van and we are pulling away, but now he’s talking on his cell phone, ordering something…and then we’re in a parking garage and there are all these groups of Broadway dancers practicing their routines, all in their spangly costumes, bright colors, lots of sequins, lots of high kicks etc and we’re trying to drive through and around several of these groups and I still can’t get my camera to work..  then we get near a stairwell and someone is waiting there.  It’s a waitress with the lunch that J had ordered!  There’s a hot dog wrapped up in a white paper napkin, and a styrofoam plate of chicken, just a drumstick and a breast, bone in, and something else on another paper plate, and a manhattan (drink) in a real glass!  And it all gets handed to me along with a knife and fork also rolled in a white paper napkin.

I’m holding all this and Jeff is driving (we’re out on a road somewhere now) and I’m considering what to do with all this food, and especially the manhattan (which is a drink from WAY back in my college days!) and I tell J that he can’t have the drink because he’s driving and he said it was for ME because I seemed “a  little stressed and needed to relax” so I had all the food back to my three siblings to split up, along with the one knife and fork and settle in for the trip sipping my drink.

Then we’re in a very crowded conference room and I’m glad there are so many people there.  J says he’s going to start things off by playing a video that “insurance companies use to get you convinced of their side of the story.”  And he starts this video and everyone (but me and my siblings) is on their feet yelling that “yea, that’s what they told me but that’s not what happened” and stuff like that.  It’s very noisy and the four of us are just sitting at the tables watching.

I’m sitting next to P, one of my brothers, and my sister B comes up to our table and crouches on the other side and says, very earnestly, “Here’s an idea, what if for EVERY PENNY you have you pay 10 cents in taxes?  Wouldn’t that help with the problem?”  And P and I look at each other and I ask B, well where would you get the 10 cents if you only had a penny?  And she gets very consternated  and says that after the meeting she’ll explain it better, and goes back to her table.  I look at P and wonder aloud if maybe she said it backward?  That for every 10 cents we pay 1 cent?  But that would just be a flat tax and that had already been discussed.  Meanwhile the participants are still yelling at the video of insurance companies.

I’m pondering B’s tax solution, trying to figure out what she was talking about when Katie the dog shakes her dog tags, a sign that it’s morning, and time to get up and go outside.

So….what did you dream about last night?