Erwa's Dream Log - June 2012

I dreamt that I had a baby seal pet. He was about the size of a squirrel. He had white specks all over him. I'm not sure what the specks were. They could have been dandruff or sea salt or something else.

The seal seemed hungry, but I didn't have anything to feed him. I think his mealtime was coming up anyways. The baby seal reminded of this pet squirrel I saw on YouTube recently: Chip.

It was move-in day for college again. I was living in a one-story complex. My room was 213, even though the building only had one floor. (I find it strange that some buildings don't always start their room numbers with the floor the room is on.) Well, I guess if the complex was only one-story, there may have been more than 100 rooms on the floor, and it's pretty clear what floor my room is on.

I was eating food with my parents in the dining hall, which was halfway down a perpendicular hallway to the one my suite was off of. While eating, I had to use the bathroom, so I went back to my suite to use its bathroom. I went in one door and saw a sink and a shower. There were two other doors on the left wall. I tried the one on the left. It opened to reveal a room with two toilet stalls, neither of which had doors on them. And there wasn't a lock on the door to the toilet room either. This was going to be like the toilets in the Whippany Park men's locker room, where the toilets face each other without stall doors. Oh well, mine was a single-sex suite, so whatever.

Suddenly, I was flipping through the booklet of opening day events. I had obtained a copy somehow, even though it was for freshmen and I was a senior. There was some Student Tech event at 8:45 PM, but then I realized it was already 9 PM. I was late. The event was in Lillenfeld Hall. (There is no such building at Yale.) I wasn't sure where building was, so I looked on a map. The map looked roughly like what Yale's campus looked like; Silliman College was in on the right side, where it should be, and I saw a blob that looked like Cross Campus. I was somewhere north of Silliman College, probably along Hillhouse somewhere. Lillenfeld Hall was located only a couple blocks to the left, except in real life, there's a giant cementery there, but in my dream, there was a hill with three buildings on it.

I knew there would be free food at the ST event, so I decided to go still, even though it had started 15 minutes ago. But before I left, I scanned the booklet for upcoming events that had free food.

Suddenly, it was graduation. It was time to decide the winner for one of the prizes. I asked Andy, who was next to me, who he thought the winner was going to be. He pointed to one of the finalists, Brett Smith, and said there was no question about it. He had been fighting hard over the past nine years to recover from a car crash, and he was finally graduating this year.

Last night, I was very frustrated after watching the Devils lose Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals to the Los Angeles Kings 4-0 and go down 3-0 in the series. Perhaps due to my frustrated state, I ended up having a nightmare.

It was nighttime, and I was in my room, when I looked out the window and noticed two men walking up the circular driveway. I immediately thought they were robbers, so I locked the door to my room and tried calling 911. Due to my nerves, the first time I dialed, I spazzed and dialed two 9s. I tried again and got it right. However, the call didn't go through. I assumed the robbers had cut my telephone line. I tried my cell phone next, but that didn't work either. I assumed the robbers had taken down the satellite dish on my house's roof from which my cell phone transmitted. (In reality, cell phones connect to cellular towers, but in my dream, they transmitted from satellite dishes.)

CRAP! I thought. By this time, I could hear that the robbers had already entered our house. Did we accidentally leave the front door unlocked or did they already pick the lock or force it open? In any case, I felt trapped. If I opened the door, they would hear me. If I stayed in my room, eventually they would reach my locked door and know someone was inside. (In retrospect, I should have taken the screen off my window and escaped that way.)

Pretty soon, I heard one of the robbers trying my door. When he found it locked, he threw his weight against the door. Then he started smashing something against the door, and chips of wood started coming off. Suddenly, the smashing stopped and I heard the robber go into the bathroom next door, presumably to get something else to smash with. Instead though, I heard the splash of urine in the toilet. He had to use the bathroom! I used this opportunity to unlock my door and make a run for it. When I passed by the open bathroom door and saw the robber using the toilet, he did not stop and pursue me. I ran down the stairs and out the front door.

I was afraid the robbers would pursue me, perhaps by car, so I did not run along the street or sidewalk. Instead, I went to my next door neighbor's backyard and ran along the backyards to avoid being seen from the street. When I reached the next cul-de-sac on my street, I left the backyard, ran across the street into the cul-de-sac, and hid behind one of the cars parked around it.

The dream skipped forward and it was bright outside. I was still hiding behind a car in the cul-de-sac, but now the two robbers were walking down the cul-de-sac. One of them called out, "I know you're hiding around here somewhere. You better come out because it's only a matter of time before we find you!" The dream's perspective shifted to that of the robber. He crouched down and looked underneath a car I was not hiding behind. "I know where you guys like to hide," he said. Though he saw no limbs underneath the car, he still waited there for 30 seconds, as if he thought I had somehow grabbed onto the side of the car and was suspending my body and limbs off the ground. He thought that if this were the case, after 30 seconds, my muscles would tire, and I would drop to the ground.

Fortunately, I was behind another car. When I saw him crouched down beside the other car waiting, I decided to make a run for it. I got up and dashed up the cul-de-sac toward the main road. This time, the robbers pursued me. I ran past someone walking along the sidewalk, and when I turned around, I saw him slug both of the robbers. They stopped pursuing me and retreated to their car.

I made it back to my house and locked the door. Inside, remarkably, I found my dad and brother were both alive and eating breakfast at the kitchen table. I asked my dad how he had survived. He said he slept through the whole ordeal. His bedroom door had been open, and I guess when the robbers saw him sleeping and heard him snoring, they just ignored him.

My brother had been awoken by the robbers opening his door. When he felt one of the robbers climbing onto the bed on top of him, he reflexively kicked upward and landed a good kick on the robber. They traded some more kicks and punches, but eventually, my brother was able to secure the robber in a tight armhold. My brother whispered to robber, "If you ever come back again, I'll kill you." The robber whispered back, "Next time I come, I'll bring 12 people."

I told my dad the phone hadn't worked the previous night when I dialed 911. He tried it himself, and it failed again the first time, but when he redialed, an operator picked up. "Hello, how can I help you?" I replied, "No problem -- we're just testing the phone." "Okay, thanks," said the operator, who then hung up.

The robbers were gone, but the threat of them coming back and bringing 12 people the next time frightened me. I no longer felt safe living in this house and thought we should go into hiding elsewhere. Before we could decide where to go, I woke up.

I was eating at a restaurant with my brother. I was furious at him, screaming at him about something. Something about why did he put the burden on me to do something. How disrespectful it was. People around staring us were staring. When I finished my rant, my brother simply said I needed to go take some hot beer shots.

I went outside to find his car. I walked into the heart of the parking lot, looking for a red Camry. I browsed a few aisles but couldn't find his car. I looked back and saw my brother standing outside the restaurant. He pointed to his right and said he parked by "eighch". I couldn't tell if he said 'H' or '8'. In any case, I went to where he was pointing, looked around, and still couldn't find his car. I beckoned Ray over. A girl appeared and came over, too. As they walked over and I kept searching around, I suddenly realized that maybe my brother hadn't driven a red Camry. Maybe that weird red motorcycle/bike hybrid I had seen might be his vehicle. It was a weird bike -- it had a platform around the rear wheel on which you could stand.

Before I could figure out how the three of us were going to all ride the vehicle, the dreamed shifted and we were all in a car, perhaps my brother's red Camry. My brother and I were in the backseat, and the girl was driving. She was driving CRAZY fast. She went to do a right turn at an insane speed, so the turn was very wide, and it looked like the car had grazed the divider in the middle of the road, but I didn't feel anything. I asked her how many drinks she had had. "Eight," she said. "Why don't you let my brother drive?" said my brother. But she kept driving.

We got to the Route 10 & Mount Pleasant Ave fork and took Mount Pleasant, getting ready to make a left turn onto New Murray Road to cross Route 10 (what I like to call the Burger King turn because there's a Burger King in the triangular block formed by Route 10, Mount Pleasant Ave, and New Murray Road). As we drove along Mount Pleasant, the girl slowed the girl and said, "It's a dead end." I didn't believe it. This was the Burger King turn! I told her to keep going and there would be a turn. She kept driving and we reached the end of the road, without another road appearing. The area was all fenced off.

She turned around and we drove back. As we were driving back up the alley, I saw an open dumpster. Inside was a single high heel shoe with a pool of blood underneath it. It was scary. I wanted to get out ASAP.

Then, suddenly, we weren't driving anymore but were walking instead. The camera angle shifted to an outside view of a cellar entrance, which had its doors open:

Source: http://www.bilco.com/foundations/store/products/bd_slw_1-200.jpg

I watched us all emerge from the cellar. As we were exiting, I was afraid the doors were suddenly going to swing close, jamming us in the hinges -- perhaps that was the cause of the bloody high heel.

We were now standing on grass. I looked around and saw a very disheveled man limping toward us with the aid of a long stick. I couldn't tell if it was just dirt on him or if there was matted blood on him. I was freaked out. The car was behind us, and we needed to get in and drive away as fast as possible. For some reason, there were some people lying on the grass that we needed to rescue. They were unconscious, so we had to lift them up and throw them in the car. All this time, the limping man was getting closer and closer to us. Before we finished moving everyone into the car and before the limping man got to us, I woke up.

My family was vacationing somewhere in France, except the city seemed like San Francisco. It reminded me of San Francisco because I was driving our car down a street named California Ave (in reality, there's a California St in San Fran), and from the highest point of the road, I had a view of a large swath of San Francisco, similar to this:

Source: http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/97500/97500,1317111195,2/stock-photo-san-francisco-street-view-85466323.jpg

As I was driving downhill, I pressed hard on the brakes because (1) I was going downhill, and (2) I was driving my mom's old Toyota Avalon, which had poor brakes. I was not looking forward to parallel parking because I hadn't done it in a long time and I was paranoid that I would scratch another car. Just as I was thinking this, I saw two consecutive parking spaces to my right. As I parked in the forward space, the camera angle shifted to a passenger side side view of the car. There was no car anymore. It was just me walking back and forth in the parking space as if I were a car.

Instead of a parking meter or a pay machine, there was an attendant standing behind a lectern. I had to fill out a form, on which I had to put a netID. I wrote down my Yale netID (ah59), filled out the rest of the form, and turned it in. The attendant passed my form to a man who inspected it. He told me to put down the attendant's name as the netID. Her name (or perhaps her netID) was Asa. I remember scribbling out the ah59 I had written and writing in Asa, but it turned out too messy, so I wrote it again, but this time, I accidentally wrote Ass, so I tried changing the second 's' to an 'a' by writing over it, but it turned out even more messy, so I scribbled it out again and finally got it right on my next attempt.

We entered a hotel and placed our luggage on a hotel luggage cart. The rest of my family was about to exit, but I noticed two men standing next to two bags we had forgotten to place on the luggage cart. I asked my parents, "Hey! Are these our bags, too?" while pointing to the bags. "Oh yes they are," my dad said. "There are maps in the black bag and my laptop is in the blue backpack." I grabbed the bags and put them on top of our other luggage on the cart.

Instead of leaving the cart for a hotel worker to bring up to our room, I pushed the cart out of the hotel, intending to push it wherever we went next. There were steps outside the hotel, and instead of pushing the luggage cart down the handicap ramp, I just pushed it straight down the steps. Amazingly, the luggage did not bounce around and none of it fell off.

The first restaurant we saw we decided to eat at. Instead of parking the luggage cart next to our table, I put it against a wall next to another family's table. The tables had white tablecloths over them and candles on them. The tables were outside. Before we could start ordering or looking around at what other people were eating, the dream shifted.

I was back in Room 303 at Whippany Park High School in Mr. Kocot's calculus class. All my classmates were there, too. Kocot was telling us that his back was really bothering him, so he was going to retire because he didn't think he could teach anymore. He told us his goal was to live until 2031 in order to see his grandchildren reach the age of 30. He didn't know if he would make it, though, because he said he was 11 years older than average. (The average of what, I'm not sure, but maybe he was 11 years older than the average age of people with grandchildren of the same current age as his grandchildren.)

Andy and I were sitting at the frontmost desk on the right side (facing the chalkboard) of the room. Kocot was standing in front of us explaining his back problem. With his hands, he illustrated. "Imagine there's a rope between my hands." Then he started twisting the imaginary rope tighter and tighter. Then he brought his hands together, and the rope bent at an odd angle. "My spine is twisted and compressed just like this rope is."

Now I was sitting at a desk on the left side of the classroom by the windows, in the third row. I was cleaning out my backpack and pulled out an old origami project. I walked around the classroom looking for a place to hang it up. Kocot saw me, took the origami sculpture, and hung it up next to the buckyball Ken and I had made. Behind the buckyball, I saw the five intersecting tetrahedra origami structure we had also made. That was the first extra-credit project we ever did. In comparison to the tetrahedra and the buckyball, the origami project Kocot just hung up looked like trash. I don't even know what it was -- it just looked like a bunch of construction paper, glitter, and pipe cleaners cobbled together.

As I sat down, Ken, sitting in his middle aisle, front desk seat, turned his head toward me, smiled, and said, "Remember how our first project [the tetrahedra] was our best one?"