The Hapless Chef / Gumshoe

Wednesday night

Dream 1: The Hapless Chef

It was sometime in the late 1990s, and I was back on Dinwiddie Street, trying to prepare a nice dinner for my family. I had planned to serve the meal at a round table in the basement playroom, but things were not going well. For some reason I was standing next to the table, holding a gray metal piece of the grill from the bottom of the stove, and it was burning. Suddenly it was too hot to touch, so, not knowing what to do, I set it down on the table, and planned to race upstairs to get some potholders. I got to the bottom of the stairway, only to see my dad headed my way, with a plate in his hand. He was having difficulty walking, so he was moving slowly. He got halfway down the stairs and remembered that he'd forgotten something in the kitchen, and slowly turned around to walk back up there. The whole time I was blocked, of course, and worried that I'd burn the house down.

Dream 2: Gumshoe

It was nighttime in New York City, and a private detective was milling about behind someone's home. He was frustrated, as he "still hadn't found what [he was] looking for." He said, "9 million houses in the city, and I gotta pick the one without a trashcan."

*****

Stress and frustration permeate these dreams, no doubt brought on by my experiences at work. Holiday time is a pretty busy period for our business.

Dream 2: Gumshoe

I used to have this conversation with my brother Jimmie: CPC: There should be a clock, a phone and a trash can on every corner." Jimmie: "But if you have a trash can on every corner, you have to pay enough people to empty all of those trash cans."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I still want them.