Tag: errors

The Writing Moment

A mental mistake. Revising today, the draft surprised me; things I thought I’d changed yesterday weren’t changed. WTH, over? Didn’t I change that? And that? Was that all a mirage, a dream, work done in a different reality.

Realization came belatedly, no, I was in the wrong draft. While working on the latest draft yesterday, I’d opened a previous draft to look something up. Well, it was the last doc closed yesterday, so it went to the top of the document list. Without thinking today, I opened it up, went to where the doc said I left off, and commenced revision. Wasn’t until I glanced at the page number and realized I was twenty pages behind that I finally seriously applied critical thinking to the moment and understood what happened.

What a rube. What a mistake. No harm; just time. But damn, I thought I did some good revising today. Hope I’ve learned a lesson and don’t do that again.

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The Mistakes Dream

Okay, another dream that placed me in the military, but I think other aspects have more meaning.

Young, about thirty-eight, the age I was when I retired, I was in a conference room with the commander and several other people. I was wearing my light blue uniform shirt with dark blue pants, standard for the Air Force and office work in those days.

The conference was very nice and modern but for some reason, the commander was upset about three lights in the ceiling. These were back in the middle, by the rear wall. The lights were small, recessed task lights, adjacent to one another, silver. The commander, a colonel, was going on about the lights being useless. “I’m going to prove it,” he shouted, “and get them removed.”

I was listening to this screed with some disdain. I thought the lights could have a use not immediately apparent — otherwise, why install them? — and it wasn’t like it made the room unusable. But I wasn’t interested in arguing with him.

The commander and a group of people left. I stayed, as did a few others, waiting for something else. Bored, I was balancing a hollow cylindrical rod on my palm. This was about three feet long, but six inches in diameter. I decided to push it against the acoustic ceiling tile. To my surprise, it cut out a perfect round hole in the tile.

The others immediately gathered, aghast, asking, “Oh my God, what did you do? Why did you do that?”

I felt more amused than upset with it, but I did immediately start trying to think of a way of covering it up. Several ideas were considered and rejected. I shrugged; the commander would come in and find it, and I’d deal with the fallout. I was almost done here, anyway, due to retire or leave within a few weeks.

Then I noticed that my uniform was screwed up. It wasn’t buttoned right, the right chest pocket was torn and hanging off, and I hadn’t attached my name tag and insignia. I also realized that I needed a haircut; I’d meant to do that and forget.

I told the rest that I need to go. “Why?” they asked. “I need to change my uniform.” I pointed out the problems with it.

The commander returned as I was doing that. He saw the mistakes and shrugged. “Go get it taken care of,” he said.

Dream end.

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A Confused Dream

Middle-aged, I was teaching others. Two younger people, male and female, were under my tutelage. I was teaching them to deliver something. The something was a small white contain, about the size of a six ounce jar of skin cream, with gold metallic lettering. Don’t know what the lettering said.

This was to be delivered to customers for use in a larger project. It was important to the customers. My assistants and I had three cars to choose from. Wanting one of them to drive, I let them choose which car. A small white car was selected. One began driving. Raining, we were on a crowded freeway. Underway, we discovered that they didn’t know where they were going because they had not taken the print out with them.

I acknowledged that as my error, as I was supposed to be teaching them. Lesson one, I told them: first, make sure you know where you’re going.

We stopped to address this. The male student began peeling the bottom of the white jar open. He was removing layers of lead. “What are you doing?” I asked, amused.

“I’m going to look inside the jar to see what it’s in it. That might give us a clue about where we’re supposed to take it.”

“One, there’s a black lid on top to open the container,” I said. “And opening it will ruin it for the customer. We’ll go back and get the address.”

We returned to HQ. This was a small office building, parking underneath, additional parking outside, on a small campus. Inside, another office working, female, at a computer, asked me, “What are you doing back so soon?”

I picked up the paper with the address. “We forgot the address. We didn’t know where we were going.”

Leaving with the paper, I became confused. Where did I park? I found my car, a red Porsche. Except, I remembered, I didn’t come in my car. That’s right, I came with the students in the little white car. I’d gotten into Porsche and had moved the car. Looking for a convenient parking space, I pulled it. It was reserved for another, but I thought management would take care of it. When I left the car, I discovered that it was white. That perplexed me for several seconds. I was certain that I’d been in a red car. How could it turn white. Dismissing that, I went into the rain, looking for the other car.

0

The City on A Ship Dream

I felt wonderfully happy. I parked my black car, a little sports vehicle in an unpaved space and went in to talk to my wife. I had to go up steps. Speaking with her about tickets and time, I had the impression that we were getting ready to leave. Then, stepping out of our place onto an breezeway, I looked across the land.

Our place reminded me of the building where we lived on Okinawa, Japan, for a few years. Built in a new style in the sixties, it overlooked an old gray stone building, matching wall, and an unpaved parking lot. The similarity ended there; Okinawa’s paved streets were asphalt. The narrow, curving streets I saw in my dream were light gray cobblestones. As my eyes swept the vista, they were drawn toward the sea in the west. It wasn’t too far off. Changing my vantage and looking north, I saw sea there, too. For a moment, I thought we were on an island, but then I knew we were in a city on a ship.

Turning in another direction, I could see much more of it. The city on the ship reminded me of an old English village. The talk about tickets and time was about getting ready to dock and arrive, not to leave. That realization pleased and excited me.

Dream shift. My wife and I had come down to some shops. Now she went off to do something. Left alone in a large, crowded business, I found a place and sat down to eat.

While eating fries, I played with a game, something made to amuse young children. It was just on a table. A woman came up and teased me about playing with her game. She then ate chips out of my hair. I was surprised because I didn’t know I had fries in my hair. I teased her about eating them without asking for permission. She introduced me to her mother. As her mother went off, she sat down to chat with me at the table.

I enjoyed her company. I was young in the dream and she was my age. White, with short brown hair, she impressed me with her self-confidence and humorous outlook. We ended up running into one another and spending a lot of time together. She seemed always happy to see me. I had the impression that she looked for me.

Then, once when we were looking out a window, I saw my wife. Out on her knees by the sidewalk, she was planting small bushes. I realized that she’d volunteer to help with a beautification project, and she’d done it all on a whim.

I said as much to my companion. This seemed to change her demeanor, as she left the table after a few minutes and disappeared into the throngs.

In another shift, I was preparing to leave. I was driving somewhere.

I decided to eat first and entered a bustling business. It was both auto-repair and food. The man behind the counter was a large, swarthy, jovial person. He was separating the customers in line between auto-needs and food. When he asked me what I wanted, I replied, “I’m hungry, I’m looking for food.”

Pretending to be aghast, he asked, “And you came here? Then you made a mistake.” Then he winked and pointed. “Go forward, the lady up there will help you.”

I wanted rice with food in a bowl but decided to leave without it. Then a friend joined me. I was giving him a ride. I told him we’d leave in a minute, I wanted to get food. Then I saw the toys like the one I’d been playing with when I met the woman. I looked for her there. After not seeing her, I told my friend, “Lets’s go.”

We went out and entered my convertible sports car. We were turning left onto a four lane road. I said, “Hold on, because I’ll need to accelerate hard to get across to where I want to go.” As he said okay, the light changed.

We rounded the corners. Stepping on the accelerator, I downshifted to a lower gear. I missed the shift. My car stalled.

I was shocked. Fortunately, traffic was light and the car was pulled to the left, by a median strip of dry brown grass.

After realizing what I’d done, I went to start the car and saw the keys were missing from the ignition. As I processed that, I realized that there was a second ignition on the floorboard to the left, and that’s where the key was. Reaching down, I turned the key, started the engine, and engaged a car. The dream ended as I began driving away.

 

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The Truth

He repeated something that his wife had told him. “I never said that,” she said before anyone else could speak.

Indignation rose. Yes, you did, he began to say, but considered, maybe he’d heard it wrong. Maybe he was mis-remembering. Or maybe she’d said it wrong. Perhaps she didn’t remember saying it, or the people that told her had told her wrong. Or maybe she’d incorrectly remembered what she’d been told and then told him wrong, but didn’t remember it.

The only way to resolve this would be record and index everything so that he could go back and know exactly what was said. 

Yeah, right. Who had time for that?

He smiled. “Sorry. I guess I got it wrong.”

0

Error

Don’t you love it when you click on the link, and it takes you to a page that tells you, “That link no longer exists. You need to update your bookmarks.”?

Ahem. I didn’t click on it from a bookmark, fools.

Don’t know why that makes me so irrationally irritated.

0

The Urge

You ever overhear someone talking, passing along erroneous information, and develop an itch to stop them and explain, “Excuse me, but, um…that’s not quite correct.”

Yeah, me, neither.

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