I HAD A DREAM.

An uninspired blogger is a dangerous beast. There’s no telling what nonsense he’ll publish—out of sheer desperation—when his well of creativity has temporarily run dry. Just think back to November 2004. I published a damn post about my left foot!

Well…it seems that November 2005 has come early. After a low-key weekend in the plains of Castilla-LaMancha, I remain uninspired—and hence, dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that I’ve been sniffing around my computer’s archives for ideas. And what did I find? My “I Had a Dream” file.

I had forgotten about this file. For a short period in 2001, I would fire-up my computer immediately upon waking each morning and document—in excruciating detail—the dreams that I had the night before.

It was an interesting experiment. Dreams seem to reside in one’s short-term memory banks. If you don’t exercise those memories shortly after waking, they’ll disappear forever. If, on the other hand, you make the effort to remember them, you’ll often be rewarded with a tale of amusing—or disturbing, depending on your point of view—surreality.

Which brings me to today’s post. I have—for lack of any better ideas—randomly chosen one of those dreams and reprinted it below. As you read it, please keep one important fact in mind: It’s not me…it’s my subconscious! Really, it is! Really!!!

DREAM OF MARCH 10, 2001

I am standing on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in North Carolina looking at a large, light-colored, wooden house on stilts. I walk through the front door and enter a large room whose walls are covered in Scandinavian-style, light teak wood. To the left is a wooden staircase leading to the second floor. To the right is an ice rink.

There is a hockey game in progress. The team is called the “North Carolina Jets.” They wear black uniforms with red letters. The game is almost over. The Jets are losing. A spectator comments that, “The Jets have the worst record in hockey; which is a shame since they were a good team before moving from Winnipeg.”

One of the Jets’ players suddenly scores a goal seconds before the closing buzzer. He is middle aged and playing without a helmet. The spectator comments that, “That player is one of the legends of the game.” He says, “I am happy that he scored, because this is his last game before he retires.”

At the right-hand corner of the rink is a concession stand. The man working behind the stand picks up the hockey puck. It is broken into two horizontal pieces. The concession man comments that he has invented a substance that would have protected the puck. He pulls out a sheet of one-inch thick black rubber. It has the color and texture of a car tire’s tread.

He cuts off a strip with scissors and wraps it around a new puck. He puts the puck into a machine, which fires the puck at 40 miles per hour against a brick wall. The puck is unscathed.

The man says that this substance will also protect humans, and that he needs to do one more experiment before marketing it. He asks if I would participate in the experiment. I agree.

I put on a crash helmet and walk to the center of the ice rink. There is a car seat, dashboard and windshield in the center of the ice. In front of (and facing) the seat/dashboard/windshield is a large green hydraulic machine with the front-end of a green 1970’s-era car mounted onto it. I sit in the car seat and fasten my seatbelt. The man cuts off a one inch wide strip of the black rubber substance and wraps it around my shoulders. He steps away, and pushes a button on the hydraulic machine.

The machine crashes the green car front-end into me at 40 miles per hour. I crash into the windshield and fall onto the ice on my right side. I feel no pain and am completely uninjured. We all laugh. Everybody is happy that the experiment has been successful.

I remove the crash helmet and walk up the stairs on the left. I enter a bedroom, also done in teak. I hear noises in the walk-in closet. I open the door and look in. A tall, thin, young Asian woman with long hair is wearing black leather shoes with stiletto high heels. She is marching in place; alternately lifting one foot, driving the stiletto heel into a hole in the floor and then doing the same with the other foot. She continues methodically driving each heel into the hole….right, left, right, left, right…

I ask what she is doing. She says that there is a man under the floor and that she is driving her heels into his head to, “Teach him some respect.”

She stops and exits the closet. I accompany her to a dresser. She opens the drawer and pulls out a pair of white leather shoes with silver studs. These shoes have longer, thinner stiletto heels that are tipped with steel and sharpened to a point. She says, “I am really going to teach him a lesson with these.”

We walk back into the closet and stop in our tracks. The man who was trapped under the floor has escaped. He is standing in the closet, his head is bleeding and he is holding a shoe with stiletto heels. He is looking very angry. The Asian woman gasps.

At this point, I woke up—and probably, for the better.

So…what does all this mean?

Well…for one, it means that I’ll never be able to run for public office now that I’ve foolishly published these details on the Internet.

It also means that my in-laws are—as we speak—likely removing all of the steak knives from their kitchen and hiding them in a shoe box in their front hallway closet.

Closet? I wonder if there’s a hole in the floor of that closet?