Folks who know me know that I'm not an imaginative or inventive human being. I'm kind of dull, actually — predictable, routinized, even humdrum. What most people don't know is that I have an extremely vivid and creative nighttime life. I dream big and I dream weird.
Take last night for example (an ordinary night by my standards). I was on my way by NYC subway to Ebbets Field to see a 7:30 pm Brooklyn Dodgers night game. I was accompanied by my elderly, arthritic father (in the dream I was in my 20s or 30s). For some reason the train took a wrong turn and instead of proceeding from DeKalb to Atlantic, took me and pop to Pacific Avenue. I couldn't figure how to find a train going back to DeKalb so we went out on the street to catch a cab. No cab would stop but a few people who were also lost decided to rent a limousine. I was told that it would cost $50 apiece but I agreed because my father was having trouble walking. However, when the limousine came, he and I had lost our way and the car pulled away without us. The next thing I knew pop and I were in a railroad car (it seemed like a compartment in a European railroad and he was stretched out asleep and I had in my arms a very pretty baby, whom I identified as my sister Susan who died at age 9 months in 1938. She was sweet and gurgling until she let loose with a tremendous flood of shit which covered my pants and even flooded over to contaminate my father. "Who diapered this baby," I shouted. I had no equipment to clean the child or myself. The conductor came over to help and offered to stop the train but then the baby girl started to spew a huge quantity of vomit all over me. I looked in her mouth and found a Band-Aid, which I removed, and then, looking once again, found a roll of gauze, which I also removed. And then, all of a sudden, I was no longer on the train but instead was visiting the home of George Bush (the elder, not W) in Houston. I had been invited for dinner, but before dinner was to be served I had to coach a grandson or great-nephew of the former president in basketball, teaching him how to dunk. Afterward we all sat down to dinner and I felt extremely awkward, wondering what would have caused Mr. Bush to invite me, a Democrat. One of the guests asked me if I ever shopped at Hill's In Bradford, Vermont and I had to report that Hill's had closed. Then I was asked if I had ever eaten at the salad bar in the old Greyhound station in White River Junction. I said that I had (it's true!!) and then I woke up.
Man o' man that was something else. Several novels worth of material for someone with a daytime imagination, I should think.
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