Oddly, in many of my dreams I am running away from people who are threats. I thought maybe you’d be entertained by this dream.
Dream: Airborne Picnic Tables
While factually I was born in Korea in the dream (same as reality), I was actually of Japanese or Chinese lineage. Relatives of my mother and father shared bloodlines and even features. Yakuza (dad’s family name) and Yorikada (Mom’s family name). My mom still looked like my mom in the dream, thus she was pure Asian lineage, but did not look it in any way shape or form. Everyone still spoke English. In the dream it all made sense. My dad (not present) was understood to be a short, stern Japanese man. My sister was still the same too–so not Asian. Well her hair was the strawberry blonde color and long length of 4 inches past her shoulders, straigtened. Her body was the soccer player body she had when we lived in Suburbia. She didn’t show up right away.
I was visiting my sister. For some unknown reason she lived in a mall. It was the same mall I’ve had in one other dream. Only it was not the same wing. I first passed a department store, where it was spacious and I could see people leisurely wandering pergot floors, searching the racks. The tiled lobby curved, having a backwards and loose S shape. The Apple Store was there too. They wore light baby blue t-shirts for their uniform. My sister’s place was sort of like the side corridors Midwestern malls have, where you might find an elevator, restroom, vending machines. It wasn’t odd in the dream.
D___, the devotee, was there. Let’s take a time out from the dream to explain some [real life] backstory.
at 7:30 P.M. MDT I receive a call from the girl whom I was best friends with in 5th grade. I’ll assign her the alias Cara S. I’m not sure what happened, but Cara S. seemed to have unexpectedly disappeared and never resurfaced in 6th or 7th grade to my recollection. In 2007 or maybe 2006, my oldest sister asked me if I was once friends with a Cara S. She (my oldest sister) happened to mention in passing she was attending some special function for her sister (me). Which maybe they happened to figure out we graduated the same year or something. I dunno and it’s not an important detail of how they determined this. I verified the name. I had Lynn get a phone number for Cara S. I think I looked Cara up on both MySpace and Facebook. I think I lost Cara’s phone number before I moved 1300 miles away. Anyways we re-connected through Facebook. Around two weeks before I returned to visit the Midwest, Cara posts a comment wanting me to call her. I was a bit alarmed since communication is usually initiated by me with her responding to her status messages or pictures of her newborn baby boy. Her message said she wanted to talk soon, which I interpreted as had an omnious and being of an urgent, pressing manner. I replied back after a couple days and said I didn’t have her number, I hoped everything was well, and she could call me. I didn’t hear from her by phone or through Facebook. I naturally thought the issue had dissipated. I’m pretty sure she had an idea I was leaving Sept. 28 since I sent an open invitation to about 30 friends for dinner in Ames and Cara S. referred to it.
Now up to speed. I answer the call, and we do the small talk friends who have lost touch partake in. Then she says she has a friend interested in me, and he wants to go on a date with me when I arrive. I asked her if it was someone I knew, No. I asked if it was someone that knew me, No. She informs me he is blind, and asked her to go through and describe her single female friends to him. Since I’m an A, I’m naturally towards the top of her 450 person list. When she says his name is D___, I am alarmed it is the son of Palmer, the boy adopted as an infant from the same baby hospital and adoption agency I came from; who coincidentally had attended the same two-year college I graduated from. Palmer had said the onset of the boy’s blindness occurred sometime in infancy before being adopted, how or why was not something I was ever privy to. I had seen the boy from far away, beyond earshot on campus.
Relieved it wasn’t the same person. I tell her I’ve been dating someone for three weeks, not looking to date anyone else, but she is more than welcome to bring him along to the dinner (with assorted friends) with her husband and baby if she so wishes because I’m not against making new friends. I guess she didn’t clue him in on all this. She also mentioned at one point D___ had dated a girl from Florida over the internet and went every month to visit her. He was looking to date and he liked what she had told him of me. I bit my tongue as to commenting or passing judgment about not liking friends playing matchmaker for me. I also resisted commenting about how I’m not particularly keen on people who date just to have anyone to fill the fear of being alone. Even if I wasn’t dating someone, I didn’t want to waste a night with someone that sounded like bad news before I even met the person. I let alot of things slide with people. So I let all this slide. This was after I reminded her I moved and live in Arizona. No, I’m not moving back anytime soon, and I don’t visit very often. I hurriedly told her I wasn’t trying to be rude but I was trying to finish getting my stuff together to leave and catch my greyhound bus on time. I didn’t feel the need to explain I was using Dial-A-Ride to get to the station 2 hours early and then I leave at 11:00 PM. I didn’t update her on the phone number of the friends I was staying at either. I simply let her presume she could reach me at my brother’s cell phone number I listed in the open invite for dinner sent on facebook.
[Believe it or not I am paraphrasing.]
Five minutes later Cara S. calls again. With D____ on the line. He wanted to call and say ‘Hi.’ Apparently she hadn’t clued him in that this was not a formal dinner date, or mentioned I was dating someone, nor that I was not interested in dating anyone. We both had to break it to him that it was a group of about 10 people meeting for dinner. He wanted to know when we could get together. I offered Friday he could join myself and one or two other old friends for happy hour. D___ zero-ed in on the fact I hadn’t said anything about Thursday. So He decided to claim it. I didn’t want to sit there and explain I wanted to do nothing with the friends I was staying with. I just said I don’t have time to talk, I’m sure we’ll figure something out once I get to Iowa.
After a bunch of snafus along my travels, my arrival was significantly delayed. The dinner with friends was cancelled completely. Thursday (10/01/2009) I was an idiot for thinking it was a good idea to wander around in the rain to practice some photography. Soaking wet, cold, numb, and not happy the phone keeps ringing as the city bus pulls up. I ignore the number the first two times. The third time, I fumble around and answer. “A__? This is D___.” Irritated, I don’t correct him or mention how I only let, family, people who know me well, or those from my childhood use that nickname. I tell him I can’t talk, I’m getting on the bus. I figured that would just be the end of it. I get on the bus, but the driver and the trainee haven’t even begun tying down the wheelchair, when The Devotee calls, again. Let’s sum it up. He calls about 6 more times from this point until, 5:15ish, which is less than a 90 minute time frame–I’m being generous.
Through these calls he is too interested in my disability. What is it? Do I live on my own or with parents? Do I use a wheelchair? Do I walk?, etc. I’m a little uncomfortable having a conversation of this nature on the phone with a stranger in a public setting. When I can’t hear someone on a cell phone, my nonsensical solution is to talk louder. I have trouble hearing on cell phones anyways, and trouble filtering out background noise in public settings, and I was still cold, numb, sopping wet, and fumbling with the cell phone a friend loaned me for the days I stayed with them.
Eventually I was able to mention I started dating someone in AZ. Then the focus turned to friends with disabilities in the area. I wanted to believe in the good and thought maybe he was lonely and wanted some more friends with disabilities or friends in general. I also thought perhaps he was trying to see if we knew some of the same people since it was a small populous. I was still uncomfortable with the conversation even though I answered the questions. I always answer everything I’m asked. Do you know alot of disabled people around here? How old are they? Are they our age? What’s their disabilities? Are they paras? Spinal Cord injury? Are the mosty guys? How many are girls? What is her name? What’s her last name?
He pressed dinner in the evening. I said I have to check and I think I have plans. M. and C. kept calling and so I was fumbling around with switching over and punching the buttons with my swollen, numb fingers. So a solid, definitive ‘No.’ There was a long pause and then I said I had plans and I had to go because I was getting off the bus and didn’t have time to talk anymore.
Later on (11:30 pm) to my surprise and dismay he called. I had to put a stop to this. I said I couldn’t due to having had prior dinner plans. This final conversation, I was buzzed, and he said he was buzzed from spending the evening drinking beer. He wanted to know about my disabled friends in AZ. Are the college students? What are their disabilities? Are they single? What are their names? Why don’t I know all their names? Are they on my facebook? Am I lying about having a boyfriend? What’s his name? How long have we been together? Is he disabled, too? Just so you know in case Cara S. didn’t mention it, I [D___] am blind and I’m a devotee. Does this bother me?
I answered his questions and offered short, uncomfortable, nervous laughs. I was frank about it bothering me. I had previously stated and then reiterated I don’t have the answers to all his questions because I don’t catalog my friends. I’m just learning names of my new friends and if I had them on my facebook, I’d know their names. As it is, I don’t have the new friends on facebook, and I don’t remember all their names. I have friends of all ages, and of a range, they are my friends, I like them for who they are and the things he’s inquiring about don’t really matter to me. Finally we mutually agreed to end all contact and communications.
Back to the Dream. I’m summing up, because I realize I’ve spent three hours to do a ‘quick’ journal about this dream before it dissipates forever.
I had a dream I was visiting my sister and she lived in a mall. This is my 2nd dream of a mall. I was being chased by The Devotee. [If you're confused about what a Devotee is?]. It’s a fetish for people with disabilities. I had my own brush with one while in the Midwest.
Instead of being a tall, husky white guy who happened to be blind, in the dream he was a 10 year old Asian boy. There was still no question who he was. My mom and I tried to run away. She could run and jump Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon style. It was a long chase scene. At first we took a Jeep Cherokee. Then we had to get back out and run on foot again. In the end we escaped by using a picnic table which conveniently had lap belts like at amusement parks, and then you just had to ‘hop’ or jump while seated and then the picnic table was like Mario Brothers style trampoline…
My mom got ADHD in the final get away, and I had to tell her to focus. My tall sister was on the other side of the picnic table and some person that was like a human, Asian version of the gold shiny robot, Sepio (sp?) from Star Wars next to her. So we bounced the picnic table down the street avoiding all the broken and rusty airconditioners all over everyone’s yards and in the street. I was reluctant to wake up because I wanted the dream to keep going.
