Dream Journal
I was involved in a car race in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. The track was icy. After three laps around the track I was ahead of everyone else. I pulled into the pit stop where friends and family were sitting around a bonfire. I sat by my mother who was knitting and Michael who was writing; I ate a hotdog.
I did the last lap on foot, slipping and sliding around the track. I slid into a middle-aged woman in front of me. I grabbed her shoulders to keep both of us from falling; we laughed about it and I went around her, going slow on the icy track. I pulled my car into the pit stop area to find that I had come in 6th place and was the third state to finish. I felt proud of my results for Alaska.
All of the people who had been sitting at the bonfire were getting up and leaving. I slammed on my breaks when I saw Michael walking by and I almost slid past him. He opened the passenger door to congratulate me and I asked if he wanted a ride home.
“Only if you want to give me a ride,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to give you a ride,” I told him. He and a friend got into the car. I sat in the center even though I was driving, with Michael on my left and the friend on my right. Michael put his hand on my left knee accidentally and then jerked it back off. He put his hand back and squeezed my kneecap so as to make it tickle. I laughed and moved my knee but he continued to squeeze it and tickle me. When it started hurting I told him to stopstopstop but he wouldn’t.
All of a sudden we saw three police cars pull up to the track with their lights on. I was glad that I had taken the last lap slow and not been one of the top finishers so that the cops didn’t take much interest in my car. I was also glad the three of us were wearing our seat belts because two cops had gotten out of their cruiser and were shining flashlights into the cars. They didn’t look inside my car.
The three of us walked into the basement at my parents’ home. The dining room was set up with many rows of long tables and chairs, just like the basement of the church. There were a lot of people crammed at the center table waiting for dinner.
I went in search of another chair, and when I came back with one from the laundry room everyone had spread out to the different tables. I put the chair I was holding at one of the side tables, making sure to leave the two special chairs at the head of the center table. No one was allowed to use them.
Michael asked me why there were so many tables at my mom’s house. I explained that they were only put out for special occasions. I told him to picture, I did a quick count of my family members in my head and then said, 35 adults and their children over for Christmas dinner. That many people require a lot of tables.
Themes: Michael