Category: cars

A Weird Dream

My wife didn’t act like herself in this dream last night. Two things were most odd.

We were traveling and in a huge building. I wasn’t certain what the building was. Sometimes in the dream, I thought it was an airport terminal, but other times, I believed it was a mall, or an indoor military base. There were signs that it could have been any of those.

Whatever it was, the place was well-lit, clean, and modern. Wide halls with thick, white pillars dominated, with alcoves and shorter, narrower hallways off to either side. Wanting something to eat, my wife and I found some fake chicken (my wife is a vegetarian). It was in a green box. Acquiring it was only half of the problem, because we needed somewhere to cook it. We needed a microwave. I thought we could find one in a break room or snack bar, so we began searching.

But, for some reason, I opened the green box, laid out the fake chicken nuggets, and then attempted to eat one of the frozen, uncooked pieces. Repulsed, I spat it out in my hand and put it back on the back plate (where there were two rows of six pieces).

While that was going on, my wife took off. I didn’t know where she was, requiring me to look for her. I was carrying around the tray of fake chicken parts while I looked for her. There weren’t many other people in this dream, so I found it quickly and hastened to catch up. I reminded her that  we needed to cook the fake chicken parts. She seemed distracted, and after some back-and-forth, she told me she was looking for a car so we could drive somewhere.

We found a car and a microwave at the same time, but she went for the car. While she drives, when we’re together, I’m the primary driver. In this dream, though, she jumped in the driver’s seat. I think the car was a newer silver American sedan, like a Ford Fusion. We drove a short distance through the building, and then she stopped the car and left it.

Confused, I was asking her, “What are you doing? We can’t just leave the car here.”

She ignored me, proceeding to ramble around the aisles and alcoves. I followed, trying to make sense of what she was doing.

Dream ended.

I’m just not in control, am I?

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Another Car Dream

It was the second part of the dream, begun as I was exiting the first part. Walking across rich, deep green grass of a valley floor, with roads on the hillside above me, I met an elderly white woman. She said, “I have an opportunity for you.”

“Hang on,” I said. I briefly returned to the first part of my dream to tie up some loose ends, telling people, “This woman says she has an opportunity, so I need to go on,” and then resumed the second part.

The dream’s first part had left me satisfied and triumphant with the outcome. I had the sense that I’d made progress, and was continuing to progress, setting the stage for the second part. I was in a confident mood, meeting this woman. She said, “I’d like you to buy and drive exotic cars for me.”

I briefly thought she meant that she wanted me to be her driver, but she said, “I want you to thrash the cars, trash them. I want you to drive them without care and wreck them.”

I said, “You want me to wreck cars?”

“Yes, I want you to buy expensive cars like Ferraris and Aston Martins and drive them like you’re an average driver in an average car.” When she said this, I saw a red Ferrari go by on a hillside road above me. It was like she’d summoned the car.

Her suggestion that I was an average driver and that I’d wreck these cars when I drove them irritated me. “Why do you want me to do this?” I said.

“As a show.” While I thought, television, she said, “No, not like that dreadful Top Gear or those other ones. Buy these cars and live them in the real world and drive them hard. I’ll give you the money. You buy the cars and drive them.”

“And wreck them.”

“If that happens. I want to show what it’s really like having these cars and driving them.”

It was weird to me. I said, “I can imagine my friends’ reaction to this, when I say some lady wants me to buy expensive cars and drive them, and don’t worry about wrecking them.”

“What do you say?” she said.

“I have to think about it,” I said.

“Why? You’ll be paid to drive wonderful cars, without any concerns about what happens to them.”

“I know,” I said, “but it seems wrong.”

The dream ended.

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Priusville

It was like Priusville stopped at the traffic light today. Between the intersecting roads, almost every generation, model, and variation of Prius was represented, that I could see. I counted twelve, included a dark green first gen Prius that a local real estate agent uses.

Sprinkled among the Priuses in our little town were also a dark blue Tesla Model S and a silver Tesla 3, a Chevy Volt, and, directly beside me to my right, a bright blue Kia Soul plug in.

My Mazda CX-5 felt like a dinosaur.

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The Collusion of Confusion Dream

It was such a muddle, with an interesting cast of my wife and her family, including her late parents. One of her brothers-in-law were present, and a niece and nephew. Three dream aspects were most prominent.

  1. The dream took place in a huge rambling home cluttered with junk.
  2. I wanted to use the toilet but the filth, clutter, and lack of privacy prevented me.
  3. My deceased father-in-law made a startling confession.

Other things that were included is that it was on a place called the property (which was weedy and brown, with a few green bushes), and a young naked man had a cameo appearance, along with car salesmen, and a seven-year-old brat.

I’m in the middle of this, of course, but that’s the dream’s essence. I was in the middle of everything, and sought privacy to use a toilet. This house, never seen before in life, was an old place, circa 1940s, painted pale yellow and brown, with multiple floors. While I don’t recognize it, a tenet of the dream was that I was returning to the house to check its condition. My sister-in-law and her hubby were supposed to be taking care of it, but it was a disaster. They obliviously cackled and laughed when it was mentioned to them.

The house was well-lit with sunlight coming through multiple windows. Trying to get through the rooms was like walking in a junk yard. Old furniture, books, catalogs, tools, and appliances cluttered every available space, including the bathrooms and commodes.

My wife’s parents, sisters, brother-in-law, and I tiptoed about, looking and talking. We tiptoed because it was hard to get around things. We all appeared to be in our forties, including my wife’s parents. After some time, I needed to use a toilet. Finding the bottom floors useless, I went upstairs. Everyone followed me. I figured that if I could find a reasonably clean commode, I’d tidy it and use that. I found a bucket of water to help me flush. I considered using the bucket for my toilet if I couldn’t find one that would do the job.

The problem was, everyone kept following me. I couldn’t get the desired privacy.  As several simultaneous conversations went on, mostly about buying cars, and mostly about buying a BMW, I went up another flight, and perhaps one more, to the top floor. It was just as cluttered as the rest. A young naked white man and young woman (white, with brown hair, dressed in blue) were on the top floor. Appearing about twenty years old, they were strangers. I didn’t care; I only wanted a toilet.

Not to be. It was now, too, that the seven-year-old brat appeared. I have no idea who this white, bespectacled child was, but he was more of a nuisance than the rest.

My father-in-law, hands in pocket, made his confession. He said, roughly, “You need to be careful, or you’ll be swindled. I know, because it happened to me.” It was longer than that but that’s the gist. His confession embarrassed him, and we were struck by his honesty. After making his speech, he walked away, going back down the stairs. The naked man said, “That took a lot for him to say. If I were you, I’d never talk about it to anyone, out of respect for him.” We all agreed that was the case even as I wondered, who the hell is this guy? I questioned him, and he didn’t know my father-in-law. The young woman acted like a cheerleader for the man, laughing at everything he said. I wanted to know why they were there. Without giving reasons, he and the young woman left.

I resumed my toilet search. Finally locating one that might do, except it had only half walls, I told everyone, “You need to leave so I can use the toilet.” Some joking was made of this. My wife and the seven-year-old didn’t go, though. The child thought it was funny to pester me.

I grabbed him by the throat and told him, “I’m serious. If you don’t leave, I’ll kill you.”

He left.

My wife came in. I told her what I’d done. She thought it humorous but I was troubled. I asked her to leave so I could use the toilet. She told me that she wanted to use it after I finished, and urged me to hurry. She would stand outside the room with her back to it and keep everyone back so I’d have “privacy”.

Experimentally flushing the toilet, I found it worked. It flushed all manner of red, yellow, white, green, and blue beads and pebbles away. But the water, which was clear, kept running. I worried the toilet would overflow, and started to panic.

It didn’t overflow.

Relief flooded me. I completed my business and went downstairs. Someone asked me a question, roughly, about how to do locate a car and know its condition. I replied with a brief explanation about a device that could be used. A used car salesman stuck his head out a room and verified what I said, elaborating on it. I thought the elaboration was unnecessary.

My wife and I walked to the front door to leave. The dream ended.

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The Miracle Focus

Cars can surprise me. The Miracle Focus did. Gather ’round, o’ peers of the ‘net, and let me share the short tale.

We have two cars. One car ‘belongs’ to my wife, with the connotations attached that this is the car that she primary drives, and that I slip behind the wheel once in a while. This is a 2003 Ford Focus that we bought new that year. It was replacing the Nissan 200 that was my wife’s car then. Rear-ended, they declared the Nissan totaled.

Saying the Focus is my wife’s car implies the other car, the 2015 Mazda CX-5, is my car. That’s not true. My car was a 1993 Mazda RX-7 R1. I traded it in on the CX-5 at her behest in 2014. The Focus was then going to be traded in on a new sports car for me.

She reneged on the deal.

All that is beside the point, and just lengthens the story without adding to the plot, as did this sentence. The Focus has 105,000 miles on it, not bad for a fifteen-year-old vehicle. My wife drives it around town.

I take care of the maintenance.

I don’t do a good job.

Trying to make up for that, I took the Focus to an Oil Stop to have it’s oil changed, its fluids checked, air put in the tires, and so on. I did that last year, too, actually in January of 2017. It was supposed to be returned for maintenance somewhere in May of 2017.

That didn’t happen.

The maintenance this year, August, 2018, was well-overdue. I wasn’t too worried because no warning lights had come on, and only twenty-five hundred miles had been added since the last oil change.

When I took it into the same Oil-Stop as last year, they wiped out the dipstick and showed it to me. “It’s a little overfull,” the tech said.

That was surprising. I didn’t add oil to the car. No one else had, either. Oil Stop was the last place where anyone had added oil. As is their custom, once they changed the oil filter and put new oil in last year, they’d showed the dipstick to me to prove it was full. Now, a year later, it was overfull.

I was impressed. This car not only wasn’t using oil, but was apparently creating it.

That’s why it’s the miracle Focus.

That, plus I think it’ll be a miracle if my wife ever really does let me get rid of it.

Not that I’m bitter or anything. That would be petty. I’m just saying…

You know.

 

 

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A Soul-sucking Dream

I thought I’d made it through the dark tunnel once again. I endure the dark tunnel every month, a cycle of conspiracy between hormones, energy, genetics, and whatever else is in my frothy concoction of life. Last night’s dreams proved some tunnel remained to be traversed.

Bottom-lining one of the dreams without dwelling on details, I dreamed a younger self was being given an opportunity by a man named Rob. Just as he was celebrating that, another person came up with a better opportunity. That involved three positions (unspecified in the dream) but the potential was so exciting. I was pleased to be offered such an opportunity. The man offering it told me he had to make some calls, but that was just a formality. He’d get back to me, he said, and went off.

Meanwhile, I was working a job and doing a damn fine job of it – cleaning and detailing cars, a job I didn’t hate, but I was ready to move on. Off on the sidelines of my dream-life, I coped with a validation process. All males were required to be validated. We were given one inch cubes. They were different colors. A raised number signified the top. My number was four. My cube was green.

I stepped into line behind a few young boys. Another young boy was there. He didn’t know what to do. I told him I’d help him.

The process began. As we moved forward, a longer line formed behind us. The process involved us taking our cube up to a man in a lab coat. He put the cube on a reader, then he peered at something, made some annotations, and handed the cube back. He never said a word.

My turn arrived. Another man stepped out from the line’s middle, walked up to the lab man, and gave him his cube. “No,” I said. Marching up, I removed his cube and handed it to him. I pointed to the front of the line, and said, “That’s the order. We’ve all been waiting. It was my turn. You have to wait like the rest of us.”

I was seething, partly because the lab idiot running it hadn’t noticed or done anything about it.

Afterward, validated by lab-coat idiot, I took the boy out with me after he’d been validated, too. I told him, “We’re validated.” He didn’t understand what that meant, so I explained the word’s definition while admitting that I didn’t understand what it meant in this context. Then I found where he was to go and sent him on his way.

Afterward, I returned to another job I had. This was in a chaotic place. I decided to organize the processes. Part of this involved men pissing. They were pissing everywhere. I determined that if we pissed in one place, that piss could be collected and dumped, and everything would be a lot better. To that end, I found a small, square metal receptacle to be a pee-holder. Setting it up in a specific spot, I spread the word, piss here. As I caught others pissing elsewhere, I’d re-direct them to piss at the place I’d established.

When it was time for the piss receptor to be emptied, I discovered it’d been leaking. Piss was all over the dark carpet. This upset me, but I thought, I need to find a better location and receptacle. I was about to do so when the man who’d offered me the great position arrived.

“Walk with me,” he told me. “This way. Let’s get something to eat.” I told him that I’d just eaten but I agreed to walk with him.

We passed under an arch and arrived at an avenue. There he said, “I have some news for you.” I was optimistic and expecting to hear that I was due to start the new position, but hearing his tone and reading his face, I knew otherwise.

“It’s not happening, is it?” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Well, I guess I’ll go with the job Rob offered.”

The man gave me a silent look.

“What?” I said, but I knew the look.

“That dried up, too,” he said.

Heavy disappointment beset me. “I can’t believe this,” I said. “I don’t mind what I’m doing, but I was looking forward to doing more, to being more.”

“I know,” he said. “Sorry.”

He departed. I returned to polishing a car. I realized it was my father’s red 1969 Thunderbird. I’m not going anywhere, I thought.

The dream ended.

The dream depressed me (as all of last night’s dreams did). I woke up thinking, for whom does the bell tolls? It tolls for me, followed by a rant about facing facts about not having writing talent, being a miserable writer, etc., to the point that I encouraged myself to give up.

I know though, that I’m not the best judge of myself. I know that I can’t predict the fickle future. This is just some feeling sorry for myself bottom of the trash can crap. I can indulge in it, but I can’t let it guide me.

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The Car Colors

Walking today, I passed a red car. My thoughts were drifting, and seeing the red car, I thought, I’ve never owned a red car.

Dad had owned a red Thunderbird. That began a stream of recollections about Dad’s cars. He’d owned a turquoise Thunderbird (with matching interior), a maroon Monte Carlo (also with matching interior), beige Corvette and a blue Corvette (guess what color their interiors were?), and a white Chevy Impala, along with a white Thunderbird. Both of the white cars had red interiors.

I thought, what an eclectic mix. But then I reviewed some of my car colors. I’d had a copper Camaro (black interior) and brown Firebird (with a tan interior), a green Mercedes (with matching interior), a white BMW (blue interior), silver Audi (gray interior), orange Porsche (brown and black interior), a silver RX-7 with a red interior, a blue RX-7 with a brown interior, and a black RX-7 with a black interior.

In each case, I’d not consciously decided on a color. It was more of a decision, this is the car for me.

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The School Dream

I dreamed I was an adult, taking a college class. A long and full class, with probably sixty students, all ages, sexes, and races were in the class. I was probably in the top twenty of the oldest students.

The teacher was Billy Sheets. Tall, slender, and middle-aged, Sheets had dark green hair and purple eye shadow. He usually wore a white Oxford shirt. He’s not a teacher I had in my life, but he introduced himself as Billy Sheets.

Class was informal. We had a half-ring of desks. That wasn’t enough to accommodate everyone, so we also had rings of pillows to sit on. In retrospect, it reminded me of a few writing workshops I attended.

The subject here, though, was sociology. While presentations were made, and I attended them, I seemed to spend a lot of time going in and out of class, and looking for a place to sit. Four memorable points emerged from this pattern.

I was walking up the steps to go in. Wooden, and painted brown, the steps were old and worn. Another guy started up the steps as the same time as me, but then stepped aside to let me go first. He wore a denim jacket, and I knew from seeing him earlier that he rode a motorcycle.

After I went up, I turned and thanked him. When I did, I saw his key fly from his hand, land on the steps and slide across into a crack. I heard it clink when it landed.

I told him that his key had gone into a crack and that I heard it land. Smiling, he said, “That’s alright, I’m not worried.”

His answer baffled me. What was he going to do? How was he going to get his key back?

Still thinking about it, I entered the classroom. I found a presentation by outsiders in progress. I was surprised because I was apparently late, and I didn’t know about this presentation. As I sought somewhere to sit, I discovered that coffee was spilled on anything. Several inches of standing coffee was on one section of the soaked red carpet. More coffee was spilled across the desk tops and soaked the chairs. The pillows were wet with coffee.

I asked, “What happened? Was there a coffee explosion?” Nobody answered me. Just as I settled in coffee free space, the presentation ended and everyone began going out on break.

I tried talking to others and the presentations, and got an idea of what I missed. (I don’t remember any of the details.) Then I went on break.

When I returned, we’d been moved to another room. It was a darker room, and more crowded. It was also the final class. Others were turning in projects and papers. I was horrified because I knew I didn’t have either to turn in. Frantic, I tried remembering if I’d already completed it and turned it in, but I couldn’t recall. I thought that if one was due, I was doomed to fall because I had nothing. I took some hope in that all my presentations had been highly scored, and I did well on the tests.

As the room became emptier, I approached Mr. Sheets and waited to speak with him. When he turned his attention to me, he greeted me with a smile. I explained that I didn’t have anything to turn in and apologized for not being sure if I was supposed to turn something in. I felt embarrassed.

But he said, “No, you weren’t assigned anything, Michael. You were a wonderful student and did a great job.” He shook my hand.

The class was over. Everyone began dispersing. I went out to a parking garage. A flowery cover was on one car. I thought it could be mine, but I was uncertain. Pulling the cover off the car’s back end, I opened a rear door and slid inside. I knew immediately that it wasn’t my car, as hundreds of medals and earrings were hung from squares on the ceiling. I couldn’t discern a pattern to it, and it baffled me why someone would do that. The car was otherwise immaculate and in excellent condition, with a plush interior.

I was confused about why I thought it could have been my car. My car was a different brand, color, and body style. With chagrin, I slipped back out. As I did, I saw the cover move at the front of the car. I realized a man was sleeping there, and as I realized that, a man lifted the over and sat up, revealing himself as Vietnamese. Neither of us spoke. I closed the back door and pulled the cover back down over the car. He laid back down and pulled the cover over himself.

Returning to the inside of the education center, I ran into my little sister, Gina, by the exit. A man my height, slender with very white skin and short white hair, and wearing flowery shirt, was standing with her. Putting a hand on my shoulder, he spoke to me in a very soft voice about things he’d like done. Now, weirdly, I told him that those were things that the command post would normally do.

We engaged in a longer conversation. I began to think he was the new commander and that I should be speaking to him with greater respect, because I was being very casual and flippant with him.

We finished speaking. He squeezed my shoulder and departed. I asked my sister, “Who is that guy?”

Gina said, “I have no idea. I’ve never seen him before.”

The dream ended.

There were many more details to this dream. I abridged things in the interest of time and space.

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A Manuscripts & Politics Dream

It began with my little sister presenting me with a manuscript. Handing over a large stack of paper, she explained that she’d written a novel and wanted me to read it and give my opinion. I agreed, but asked her to reciprocate: read my novel and give my opinion.

Gina’s manuscripts turned out to be a humorous mystery. I thought it had a lot of merit. That’s the feedback I gave her. Did she have feedback for me? No, she hadn’t read my ms. She started but then forgot.

Her answer frustrated me. I’d lived up to my end, etc. I was called away before we could finish the conversation. Gina and I agreed to meet later.

Going on somewhere else via dreamport, I was now in a hilly city. It had been rainy. I was standing on the corner by a street. A man in a dark suit and raincoat (who looked a lot like James Noble (the actor)) approached me. We knew one another and shook hands and talked. Within a few minutes, he was telling me that they’d just come out with word about who the new POTUS was going to be. He gave me a name. It as going to be announced soon.

The name surprised me. I knew the man’s name and so on, but didn’t know him. I expressed some concerns about him.

We started walking down the hill. He was  concerned about the choice, too, and was wondering where the man was. He didn’t know if the man had heard yet. As we walked down the hill, the other man mentioned the name again, and then said, “Do you know who he is?”

I began talking about that when the other said, “No, he’s my father.”

That completely surprised me. We went through a conversation about their last names, which was something like LaFontaine. I said, “Pierre?” The other said with a smile, “No, that’s the NRA guy.”

As I was mulling that information, others arrived, and the conversation went on again about the new president. Then the new president drove up in a little old white imported economy car. While it ran without any problems, the car looked like it was forty years old, something small, with petite chrome bumpers, like a Datsun 510 (see the picture?) from the early seventies. (I’ve never owned or drove a 510, btw.)

The others all went off. I trudged back up the hill and, via dreamport, returned to my sister and the manuscripts. She’d read my manuscript and had some suggestions. As we began talking about that, a second younger sister, Sharon, arrived to give me her manuscript. I was surprised. We began talking, and as we did, I said, “I need to add more humor to my novel,” and was excited by immediate ideas that came to me about how to do that.

Then I awoke.

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