Posts tagged: driving
We are barhopping, shopping, and generally bumming around an underground mall sort of deal. From the outside it looks like a giant, cream-colored Victorian house. We only went down in the basement. After wandering around a giant junk store with a lot of good chairs to sit in, we sit down in bar-style seating, although open to the store in front of us, for a quick dinner at a restaurant inside the store.
A girl I knew freshman year of college, Hannah P, is there with her not-so-great blonde hair. She was much more attractive as a brunette, and this occurs to me even in the dream. She is seated at the end of the line, and makes a big stink about being stuck at the end. We switch it around, which takes an unbelievably long time, and it turns out we are too late to get dinner. We need to go, and we might be too late.
I eventually find my way into a van with a whole mess of people. It’s one of those fifteen seat sort of deals, and colored a very standard white. We are on this road, but instead of a large bridge, it dumps directly onto the highway. And I’m quite certain it is heading west, not north.
Heavy traffic has us completely stopped on the first part of the on ramp. As we wait for a break in the bumper to bumper, we start eating lunch. I have a huge plate of chicken drumsticks and thighs, and also a large quantity of pulled pork. Along with being quite messy, the meat proves to be rather unwieldy, and I keep dropping chunks of pork and chicken onto the floor. My father, who is apparently also in the car, talks at length about homebrewing.
A sudden break appears in the traffic, and our driver, a high school acquaintance named Sarah M, pulls out onto the highway and floors it. She is a somewhat mousey girl, and the idea of her driving this giant van is frightening to me. She weaves across lanes before taking a left at a fork, after which she slams on the brakes. We went the wrong way.
Because she had been driving so quickly, there is still room behind to back into the other lane. She reverses at full speed, again slamming on the brakes to stop. We spin out of control and completely around, almost hitting the cars behind us, which have now caught up. No one seems to be hurt and the way ahead is clear, so we again start along the highway to wherever it is that Sarah is taking us.
———-
More cars, more driving, and more traveling. I don’t seem to ever be traveling toward a destination, more towards a method of reaching that destination. In this dream, for example, I once again got the impression I was heading for the airport.
There has to be something to take away from this sense of needing to reach the way to reach my goals. I will think about it.
We begin with a discussion of snowboarding accident and injury, specifically falls from great heights especially when one wouldn’t expect to be so high as he actually is. I would call them “surprise height falls.” I watch, either from a helicopter or a disembodied, flying viewpoint, a girl’s snowboarding team take a couple of spills that usually involve falling through a layer of snow and down several tens or hundreds of feet. None cause any serious injury, but it sparks further discussion about the dangers associated with such falls.
Apparently, a male snowboarder once fell so far that he lost both of his hands in the accident. After the accident, he became extremely depressed and sought to kill himself. The really sad part, as I am to understand it, is that he couldn’t even end his own life, because he didn’t have hands.
As this story is related to me, one of the girls starts a long grind across a red pole on the narrow ridge of a mountain. The pole shoots upwards, while at the same time the ground drops out below. She panics as she realizes the danger, ultimately causing her to fall off the rail and down off the side of the mountain. She barely manages to catch herself on some icy evergreen trees overlooking a crowded ski slope.
We all ride down to the crowd, the girls on blue (or possibly red) matching team boards, and me probably still floating behind as a disembodied viewpoint. They tell me they always finish with one last run through the crowds and all the way out into the parking lot. Maybe it makes them feel like part of the common people, or it reminds them where they came from - I’m not really sure and I didn’t ask.
I, now firmly attached to a pair of skis, ride out to our van or SUV, which is black or dark blue and parked in a crummy garage similar to what a hanger sized version of the single-car at my old house would be like. I start the car and warm it up, fiddling with the radio.
At first, I put on AC/DC, or something incredibly similar. It almost had to be “Shook Me All Night Long,” as I can’t imagine any other AC/DC song playing in a dream, but you never know. As my companions, who are all now different people (probably my sister and a few of her friends), file into the car, I put on some weird, baby album. For babies, I mean. The songs are bizarre and childish, and I’m not sure why I put them on. They aren’t quite out there enough to be hip, but also are not accessible enough to be enjoyed by most adults.
No one complains, however, as a baby is suddenly in the car with us. I try to interact with it, but I’m not really sure what to do. Maybe it is a toddler, actually, because it is sitting up all by itself with a full head of curly, blonde hair, and I don’t think babies can do that. I have some success interacting with the little guy, and I get the impression that it might be my sister’s child. Or she is expecting. Something about my sister and babies and I am playing with a baby.
———-
I’m drawing a blank on injurious falls, but the back half of the dream eventually starts to establish a theme: My sister. Snow, skiing, female acquaintances I don’t know but am friendly towards, possible babies - these are all tied in with her and her married, Colorado lifestyle. We also both listened to TMBG’s No!quite a few times, which would at least partially explain my music selection.
In conclusion, my slight belief in the foresight of my dreams will get a huge boost if my sister is pregnant the next time I call her. Granted, I wouldn’t expect a child of hers to have curly, blonde hair.
Grocery shopping. The store was not particularly well designed, as there was a small flight of stairs separating two parts of the store. That’s no problem if you have a basket, but I had a cart full of groceries. I thought it ill-advised to attempt the stairs, but I was able to ask a friend for help. I haven’t seen David R in several years, but he was there with his sister, Stephanie R, and between the three of us I got down to the second level.
I immediately abandoned my cart and found myself in a small, very natural section of the store. The whole place had a rustic feel, as though it was a grocery inside the idea of a log cabin. This corner of the store, however, existed in almost outdoor conditions - there were plants growing in the corners, in particular a small growth of bamboo in which I met a peculiar man.
He was trying to pee in the bamboo without attracting too much attention. I got the idea that it wasn’t a huge problem to pee in one of the natural corners of the store, but might be slightly taboo or embarrassing if someone called him out on it.
I provided a distraction or cover for him as he finished up, and he took a real shining to me. He was a nice guy, and I liked and trusted him immediately. As we walked through the store together, I couldn’t help but notice that his penis was still dangling out of his pants, innocently forgotten. It was too awkward to say anything and almost too awkward not to. I chose to ignore it and hope no one else noticed.
For whatever reason, I wound up catching a ride with the peculiar man, and we followed my friends down the highway. I can’t remember what we talked about, but he quickly established a pleasant, paternal relationship with me. It was all mildly inexplicable but thoroughly enjoyable. After a few minutes, I asked him to turn around and take me back to the store, as my car was parked there anyway. He was embarrassed that he had driven me away from my own car in his friendly enthusiasm when I hadn’t needed a ride in the first place.
Rather than turning around at an exit or emergency turnaround, however, the peculiar man simply gunned the engine and did an insane, terrifying powerslide across two lanes and into the grassy berm. He gunned the engine again and drifted us up against the tree line then back across the road. We saw flashing lights in the distance, but he assured me the police weren’t after him for all his reckless driving. He knew what he was doing from a technical standpoint, but I had no clue as to why he felt now was an appropriate time to show off his driving. In my waking thought, I began to wonder if maybe he was a stuntman.
———-
Looking back, I think he was showing off to impress me. As he didn’t have sufficient face-time to make a lasting personal impression during our car ride, which I interrupted by requesting to return to my own car, he felt the need to show off. It further reenforces my notion of him as a sort of father figure, although my own father, while I am sure he (and every father) feels a need to be impressive in my eyes, rarely goes out of his way to show off.
Actually…(several minutes of thought elapse here)… yes he does. They all do. And I don’t blame them in the least. It’s a reflection of how we feel about our own fathers and a deep-seated need to be worthy in their eyes. It only makes sense to reflect that back at our sons as we age and watch many of our roles reversed.
One way I’m thinking of it now: As children, a son is dependent on his father for everything. Teaching, training, food, housing, protection, advice, etc. Although I wouldn’t cheapen a family social bond, the son wants to prove himself worthy of inheriting the legacy of his father. If his value to his father increases, the willingness to share increases, and the more he can learn, as he proves the more he can be taught.
At a certain point, a man becomes independent of his father. For a time, the relationship might be equal or at least shared, but eventually the father needs help, security, and protection. The son offers this freely, as it was once offered to him, but in the same way, the father struggles to prove his worth. He needs to show he deserves and makes good with the support, knowledge, and training he is given.
I’ve seen this in my father as he begins to lean on me for assistance, advice, or expertise. We are well into the “sharing” phase, but role shifting, especially with my parents, is frightening to me. Am I so old and wise and competent? If I’m expected to do a few things for my parents, I must be expected to do all sorts of things for myself, which is a lot of responsibility, whether I welcome it or not.
My father was the man I grew up thinking I could eventually be like (and unlike), and now here we are, under a system of mutual respect. We strive to be like (and unlike) each other in various ways. He has told me I have qualities he wishes he had, and I’ve tried to teach him about things of which I feel he has an incomplete understanding, just as he has done for me my entire life. We are both searching for happiness, contentment, and partners. It’s not that we are incredibly similar, but we sure have a lot in common. To a frustrating degree, really.
