Get Out of Jail Free Card

Saturday night

My wife's boss'es family was on vacation, and their son, Jamie P., had gotten permission to get out of jail and join them. The catch was that in order to do this, he had to carry around a helium balloon that contained a card denoting his temporarily free status. Jamie had three chances to put a balloon on the end of a machine and blow it up with the card inside. If he was unsuccessful after three tries, he had to go directly back to jail. He attached the first balloon, a long dark green one, and began to fill it with air, but it exploded.

*****

My wife's boss'es family is on vacation right now, but none of their family members are in jail. Jamie P. was a cool guy who used to work with me at Penguin Feather Records at Bailey's Crossroads in Northern Virginia. He was (and presumbably still is) an Italian-American, with a big black mustache. He was shorter than me, and a few years older. I've always remembered one thing he said to me about the record store: "If you think this is a hard job, wait until you get out in the real world, and get a real job." Maybe he had had a real job, and decided to work in a record store instead. Anyway, I haven't seen him since I quit working at Penguin Feather, circa 1982.

The get out of jail card probably refers to Monopoly, which is one of my favorite games, although I don't get to play it nearly as often as I'd like. I'm lucky if I get in one game a year, with the nieces at Christmastime. I took part in an interminable game with friends Preston and M-J and my future wife on 8/6/2000, and I think that the rest of them have sworn off Monopoly ever since.

I told my wife about this dream this morning, and she reminded me where the card-in-the-balloon thing came from. Not long after I went to work for my current employer, they rented out a meeting room with a stage at the Frist Art Gallery here, and had a pep rally to get people psyched up about a big publication that sales people were supposed to get out and push. Everyone who attended the rally was given a number, so that the crowd was divided up into about six teams, each of which had a team leader. At one point the team leaders were called up on stage, and each had to pick a helium balloon. Once everyone had one, each balloon was popped with a pin, revealing cards inside which contained details of a skit that was to be improvised by the respective teams. Several people in the audience were heard mumbling things along the lines of, "What, are we back in junior high school now?" It was embarrassing. About 3/4 of the way through I cut out and went upstairs to look at some paintings.