I think we all dream, and remember little of what we dream after we wake up. But sometimes your dreams stay with you. Last night was one of those times.

I had to make a business trip to Denver. I was at the airport. I was traveling by myself and met a young African American man. We spoke and decided that I would save him a seat on the plane. I found a two-seat row that was empty and sat down. A few people tried to sit next to me but I said I was waiting for a friend. One woman paid no attention to me. She had an interesting face. She looked like she was South Asian, but she had a chin that projected forward further than anybody I have seen in real life. She ignored me when I told her that I was saving the seat. She told me her name (which I don’t remember) and that she worked for the U.S. government, at some security related agency. She spoke with an accent. She asked me a lot of questions. My friend never showed up, so she remained. I had a feeling that she knew the man behind me.

She told me that she was going to Chicago. I was surprised and told her the plane was going to Denver. She told me I was wrong. I looked at my ticket and saw that I had to change planes in Chicago. I decided that everyone else on the plane must be going to Chicago.

The stewardess asked us to pull down the shades. Everyone did, and she told us about our upcoming flight (to Chicago). It was a long speech and I realized that I didn’t remember leaving the ground. I peeked out the window and saw we were just pulling out of the gate.

We started slowly. We lifted off the ground, but only about 20 feet or so. We were flying at this level through town, our wings barely missing trees and buildings. Eventually, we rose up.

Before I knew it, we were coming back down. The stewardess said we had some mechanical problems that had to be addressed. We all got out. I was told we were in Marietta GA. I wandered through a shopping area waiting for the plane to be repaired. I was with others. We heard (how I don’t know) that they were bringing in a tow boat to tow us and that we’d have to wait for another plane. We walked down a street and saw a rusty tow boat heading where we thought the plane must be.

END OF ACT ONE

I am in an office conference room with three other men. We are all wearing dark blue suits, white shirts and ties. I tell them the story that I just wrote in Act One. Except it isn’t Denver I was going to, it was London. And although I never got there for obvious reasons, at the same time, I remember the week I spent there. I didn’t tell the other men about what I did in London because I knew it made no sense, as I was stuck in Marietta GA.

It was lunch time, and we left the building and went out onto a major street. The neighborhood looked a bit downtrodden. One of the men told us he knew a place, that we should turn to the left. We did, but there didn’t seem to be anyplace to eat. We passed an Indian restaurant which would have been fine with me, but it didn’t look completely reputable.

My companion said we should have turned right, not left, so we reversed course, and we wound up in a more upscale commercial area. We got to the restaurant he was talking about. It was a fast food chicken place, with only outside picnic table like seating. He said he knew it was good because he owned the building it was in and he owned the restaurant.

The large scale menu was on the side of the building. The only word you could see from a distance was “SAMPLE”, which topped four separate columns. It seemed that each of these SAMPLEs headed a column that gave you a choice of the type of chicken to order. But to decide what to order, you had to read the fine print, which looked like the scrawl a homeless man would write on a piece of cardboard – no punctuation, no margins, etc. And each ingredient seemed to be identified by a letter. So under a SAMPLE, it would say (B) (G) (H) (O) (N) (U) to explain the ingredients. In addition, there were thousands of post-its one the menu wall, in all colors, and you had no idea what was one them or if they were also related to ingredients of each type of chicken.

I told my companion the owner that it was impossible to read this confusing menu. He looked surprised at me and said “I never thought of that. You might be right”.

I woke up.

END OF PLAY

So that’s the dream I remember is pretty extensive detail. What interests me about this is that this memorable dream was so uninteresting and unimportant.

Time for a nap.