The Time Jim Broadbent Embarrassed Me at Church

Last night I dreamt that I was at church. I'm not sure it was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but a bunch of people from my real church were there. I was in front of a room full of people on folding chairs. (It was either Sunday School or a fifth-Sunday lesson like we had last week.) The problem was that I was being really inappropriate and talking about movies that I have no business watching and gay-culture lexicon that I have no business knowing. Everyone was really uncomfortable. I decided to leave the room in the middle of the lesson, but of course the meetinghouse was like a maze and I couldn't find my way around. (I've been stuck in this same church building in other dreams.)
Anyway, I was in the cultural hall when I realized that I'd forgotten to get my purse. It was still on my chair in the classroom. I couldn't find the classroom. I was down in a trench in the floor of the gym that was lined with green velveteen. Then Jim Broadbent showed up with my purse and an armful of everything that used to be in my purse. He dumped it all on the green velveteen shelf at my chin-level. One of the things that had been in my purse, apparently, was a box of Yaz birth control pills.

"I want to take your picture for the church newsletter," Jim Broadbent said, pulling out his SLR.

"Um, you probably don't want these in the shot," I said, trying to shift the Yaz box out of the frame.

"No, leave them where they are. We need to show the congregation that a good Christian girl could be taking birth control pills for other medical conditions."

"I don't think I'm your best example right now," I argued again. Besides, he was standing so far above me with that camera that I was going to look weird no matter what. And my hair was messed up. I wanted to just run away, but I was afraid he'd take the picture as I climbed out of the trench with my skirt hiked up.

Jim Broadbent said he didn't care, and then I woke up.

The Time Nathan Fillion Joined the Education Program and Some Other Men Invaded My Personal Space

Last night I dreamt that my education college was having a required end-of-the-year dinner for everyone who was completing the program. It took a while for me to find where the dinner was, and when I did walk in to the auditorium where it was held, I was almost hit in the face by a dancer or a juggler or something. I guess the dinner was on the stage in the auditorium, but something else was scheduled on the floor.

Anyway, I finally got there, and my favorite educational psychology professor was still setting up folding chairs around round tables. I helped her out. I was also glad to see that I was seated at her table because she's cool. I realized that most of the people at my table were extraordinary in some way—they'd won a scholarship or done a special self-directed project or something. I wondered why I'd been assigned to the table.

When it was time for the dinner to start, only half the people were there. I sat about a quarter of the way around the table from my favorite professor so that she could see me. Then this physics guy I know (name withheld) sat down on my right, and a guy who, in my dream, had been bugging me for dates sat to the right side of Physics Guy. Nathan Fillion, star of Castle, among other things, was seated to that guy's right. We started eating, and Physics Guy started leaning on his chair sideways so that only the left two feet of his chair were on the ground. Guess what he was leaning on? Me!

"Stop it," I said, pushing lightly at his shoulder. He just ignored me and kept telling some weird story over-loudly to the whole table. "Get off," I said, pushing harder. He anchored his right hand to the table to put more pressure on my shoulder. Luckily, Physics Guy always underestimates girls. "GET OFF ME!" I yelled, shoving him so hard that he fell into the other guy who liked me. I jumped up from the table as Physics Guy tried to rock back onto my shoulder. He had to catch himself.

Then I looked out at the table. Everyone had gone quiet and was just staring at me. Even the people at the ordinary table were quiet and staring at me. Physics Guy started saying something like, "On seven prior occasions, I have leaned on you without such violent repercussions." The other guy who liked me said something rude too. He was mad Physics Guy leaned on me when he couldn't.

"Get up," I ordered Physics Guy while waving him up with my hand. "Get up and move down. I'm not sitting by you again." He moved into my old seat. "You too," I said to the other guy. "Move down one so I don't have to sit by Physics Guy." Groaning, both guys moved. I plopped down next to Nathan Fillion. People eventually started their conversations back up.
"Sorry about that," I whispered to Nathan Fillion. "That was super embarrassing."

He smirked and whispered back, "Well, you're right. It was the most embarrassing thing that could ever happen. It was much worse than if you had fumbled a football during the final play of a game against our rivals in front of 25,000 people."

Now that really should have made very little sense to me, but I smiled, then giggled, then laughed outright. "You're right," I whispered back, "that's much worse!" Then our paper plates were there, already filled. In the top left corner was a small piece of yellow cake layered with cream and strawberry slices—eep, in the top right third was some mixed rice pilaf, and on the rest of the plate was something covered in gravy. I picked at the side of the rice pilaf that was farthest from the strawberries.

I was just about to whisper to Nathan Fillion, "So, what takes you to the education program? It can't be the money," though I was worried he'd hate me if I mentioned his celebrity at all, when a large arm came swinging toward my head and I had to duck. I looked to my left. The guy who liked me had been replaced (or at least made to move down so another chair could fit around the table) with a behemoth of a college football player in a burgundy and white jersey. The football player was talking with his hands, seemingly without noticing my presence. I had to duck twice more and once thrust myself into Nathan Fillion's personal space to avoid the beefy fists and even beefier elbows. Nathan Fillion was silently laughing at me. Then Football Player gestured with his fork, on which was a strawberry that fell off his fork and landed in the middle of my rice pilaf. I frowned and pushed my plate away.
"Ahem," I said to Football Player, "do you mind?" He didn't even turn to look at me. The next time his arms came around, I pushed the back of his hand around to his side with my flat palm. Football Player blinked down at me. "I know you're used to being king of your domain," I said, "but just for this dinner could you please pretend to be a girl and keep your arms and legs in your own little box?" I demonstrated by tucking in my elbows. Football Player turned away without reacting at all. He started talking to someone else, and his elbow was back in my face.

I fantasized about leaping out of my chair, throwing my napkin on my plate, and yelling, "This is what happens when you require people to attend a stupid dinner!" I was still getting up the courage when I woke up.

The Time I Just Wanted Peanut Butter and Jam

This morning I dreamt that my real friend Arynn and I went out to a corner grocery store run by an old skinny guy. Arynn had never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so I tried to tell her about them in Spanish to practice our Spanish skills. She wanted to try one for the first time.

However, the only peanut butter the guy had had m&ms in it and was waterlogged. He said he got a huge discount on his stock because water had gotten into the jars. I was like "No, thanks, Arynn can just use my peanut butter to make her sandwich," and Arynn started swearing like she does.

Next we decided to look for jam. I was overwhelmed by the choices. Some girl suggested sour cherry preserves, which sounded perfect so Arynn found an eight-ounce jar and took it to the register. It cost $7.56. Arynn said she wouldn't &$%# pay $@^& $7.56 for a #!%* jar of *&%^% jam. I said we should check in the display of one-and-a-half-ounce jam jars that the store owner probably stole from a mom-and-pop diner.
Most of the small jars were really old and the jam was separated. There wasn't any sour cherry, but there was some really old raspberry, some new marmelade, and some strawberry jam which I can't eat. There were also some slightly squished packets of flavored honey that looked like those foil-wrapped butter pats. I told Arynn she should get honey instead, but she didn't want @$#! honey because she wanted a pb&j sandwich. I needed to tell her that peanut butter and honey sandwiches are just like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

In fact, I was about to tell her when a very dirty guy about forty years old with worn clothes got in my face, introduced himself, and put out his hand for me to shake. I shook it, and he kept holding my hand. I yanked my hand away, and he looked very sad. "I know you're in a suit," he said to me, "and I've fallen on hard times, so I shouldn't be talking to you, but I wanted to meet you anyway."
"Um, thank you?" I answered. I was pretty sure he was going to ask for a handout at any moment, so I was debating whether to give him anything. Arynn frowned and sidled up to me. The guy looked like he was going to say something else to me, but Arynn pulled me over to the cash register so we could buy the old raspberry preserves. The tiny jar cost $7.32, and Arynn #$^&ing payed anyway because the dirty guy was shuffling towards us. We should have gotten the sour cherry after all.

The hobo reached us, and he started telling me in a low voice how his wife, Edna Mc______, was murdered a few years ago, and he hasn't found her killer. Arynn interrupted him and tugged on my arm. "Um, nice to meet you," I told him, and we left the store.

Arynn was walking really fast and swearing a lot about how I #&^$ shouldn't have !@&$ talked to him. "You don't @$^& have to #!$% go out with someone just to be *@^# nice!" she said.

"Ew, I know," I answered. "I wasn't going to go out with him! If he had asked me for my number, I would have just say no. I just wanted to be nice by talking to him." I thought for a moment. "He was telling me about how his wife, Edna Mc______, was murdered, but wasn't she an actress who was murdered like a long, long time ago?"

"Yes, in the 1920s. He's @#%$ delusional," Arynn said. And then I woke up.

The Time I Went to a School with People with Superpowers

Last night I dreamt that I went to either a boarding school or a small liberal arts college. In one wing of the school, all the students with superpowers hung out. They had their classes and dorms there, and most of them rarely went to any other part of the school. I was part of this wing, but I don't know what my superpower was. I may have been a squib, to borrow from J. K. Rowing.

For fun, my friends and I would jump around the stairwells. Some would even leap down the shaft between the stairwells and grab a bannister three floors down. One of my friends could almost fly and used the stairwells for practice. Some of us looked normal enough, like the stretchy guy, to wander out of our wing without arousing suspicion, but then there was a really tall girl, a bluish vampire, and a hairless guy with raised lines all over his body. They had to keep a lower profile.

One of the normal-looking superhero girls started liking a new guy at the school who was not a superhero. She even invited him to hang out with us, in our non-superhero capacities, once or twice.

Afterwards, the rest of us had a meeting to discuss him where we all sat cross-legged on the dingy, yellowish linoleum of our hallway. Half of us thought it was okay for him to hang out with us and perhaps eventually know about us, and half of us thought it was a bad idea and the girl should stop seeing him. We compromised by deciding to investigate him further before making a final decision. I was nominated to conduct the investigation. I was supposed to go to the normal wing of the school and talk to a girl whom we had learned through sources was his ex-girlfriend.
The ex-girlfriend, a small, dark-haired girl who worked in the student store, told me as she arranged pencils behind the counter that she and the guy had never dated. They were just really good platonic friends. I was suspicious and wondered what was wrong with him. Then she said he was a nice guy and that my friend should take a chance on him. I thanked her for her time and started walking back to my wing. The girl put her hand on my arm, and when I had gotten down the hallway to the corner, her hand was still on my arm. I looked back and saw her arm stretched all the way down the hallway. The other students in the hallway just walked around as if they either didn't notice or were so familiar with superpowers that they weren't interested.
I shook off her hand and retreated to my wing to discuss on the floor with my friends. Maybe my superpower was that I transfer superpowers from one person I touched to another. On the other hand, maybe there were people with superpowers at the school whom we didn't know about. Maybe that "nice guy" was a spy for another superpower-having faction.

Then a professor showed up and handed out transcripts. I was graduating, but I had holds on my transcript. I asked the professor about the hold codes, and she looked at my transcript with her brow furrowed for a while and then concluded that I must have not returned all the textbooks I checked out. She shrugged, "You know that health book, well, none of the graduating girls have returned that." I promised to find the books and give them back, and then I woke up for a little bit.

The Time I Battled Snide Comments about Islam

This morning I also dreamt that I was reading a newspaper article. It was a long article somewhere in the middle of the A section: "Indian Muslims Hold Services in Hindi". It included a large picture of smiling Indians wearing salwar kameez. Only some of the women covered their heads. The article also contained some Devanagari script, which changed every time I looked at it because I'm not familiar enough with written Hindi for it to stay the same. I think the script was supposed to be a symbol for Allah/God in Hindi, but again, I don't think it was accurate. Anyway, this whole dream would have made a lot more sense if the article was about Pakistani Muslims holding services in Urdu or something, but whatever.

I was in a large white room with folding chairs, and my mom was there too. I showed her the article. "Good for them," she said. Then she looked at my face and said, "What do you think about it?"

I shrugged. "Well, I'm not sure if I should have an opinion because people can do whatever they want in their own religion. I guess it's cool that they can understand the prayers and the Qur'an now because they're not in Arabic anymore. It's good that people know their religion."

"I'm glad that they're breaking away from their relationship with Arab Muslims," my mom said. "It shows that they are rejecting the terrorists in the Arab world."

I groaned and rolled my eyes at her, then I read more of the article: "When I asked the local imam about Islam, he continually quoted from the Hebrew Bible rather than the Qur'an, as if to prove his religion through mine," the reporter wrote.

"I'm not sure I like the tone of this article," I told my mom. Then my mom suggested that we invite an imam to talk to us about Islam for family home evening.

Suddenly it was family home evening. The imam looked an awful lot like the man who represented the Muslim Student Association at the Freethinkers' Society panel discussion: mid-thirties, clean-shaven, wearing a shirt, tie, and slacks. One of the walls of the room was now painted with that chalkboard paint. My dad was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded and his face ready to disagree with whatever the imam said.
The imam just started telling stories from the Qur'an that are also in the Bible to build common ground and also show us what the Qur'an can add to our understanding of the Bible: Joseph and Zulaikha, for example. During each story, one of the family would draw stick-figure interpretations of the story on the chalkwall with chalk.

My brother's turn to illustrate came, the imam told the story of Saul and Chemish. (No real story like that exists in the Bible or Qur'an, but that's not important.) My brother thought the imam had said "Sean", so he wrote "Sean" on the board and then asked, "Do you want me to spell Sean s-e-a-n?" I went up to him and said, "No, it's Saul, not Sean," but he was already off on his spelling obsession.

"I want you to spell Sean s-h-a-u-n!" he barked, writing "Shaun" on the board. "How do you spell Sean?" he asked me.

"Right now we're talking about Saul and Chemish," I said. "Could you write Saul on the board? It's s-a-u-l."

"How do you spell Michael? I want you to spell Michael m-i-k-u-l!" he yelled, blinking hard and writing "Mikul" on the board. "Oh, I wish it was spelled m-i-k-u-l!"

"How do you think you spell Chemish?" I asked.

He wrote a crazy bunch of letters on the board and muttered, "m-i-k-u-l."

I rolled my eyes, and then I woke up.

The Time I Realized I Don't Smoke

Things I've never tried.

Last night I dreamt I was talking about smoking with a woman who had just quit a pack-a-day habit. I told her that I know how addictive they are: I tried a cigarette once to test the theory that they relax asthmatic lungs. After that, I get a craving every month or two and smoke another one. "Does a pack-a-year habit even have negative health effects?" I asked her.

"Probably not," she said, "but how did you go to the temple yesterday [I actually did in waking life] if you smoke cigarettes every once in a while?"

At about this point, I realized I was dreaming, so I stopped talking the the imaginary lady and just had an argument with myself:

First-person me. Well, since I always mean to never smoke, I repent after each cigarette and I can go to the temple in between semimonthly cigarettes.
Third-person me. But you can't just kneel down and say, "Sorry, God, I won't do it again," with the Word of Wisdom! You have to confess to the bishop and stop taking the sacrament and stuff.
First. For just one cigarette?
Third. Yeah, the Word of Wisdom is included in the temple recommend interview. You have to report to the bishop when your status on those essential questions has changed. It's part of your temple covenants, remember?
First. But I just went to the temple yesterday! How did I go to the temple if I'm breaking the Word of Wisdom?
Third. Good question. Did you just lie to God?
First. No, I would never do that! Wait, maybe I don't smoke.
Third. Are you sure? I distinctly remember you smoking from time to time. I even remember the sour taste of an unlit cigarette in your mouth.
First. No, I couldn't have smoked because I've always been worthy in my temple recommend interviews. If I'm going to the temple, then I must not have that pack-a-year problem.
Third. Thinks hard over life memories. Oh, yeah, you don't! You don't have any real memories of smoking. I think you've just had dreams about smoking before, and your dream self's memories are your previous dreams, not your real life.
First. That makes sense. I've had dreams before when memories of previous dreams played a part in what happened. Maybe that's what's going on here. Even that taste is just what I imagine a cigarette tastes like based on the smell of tobacco and what I've read in thriller novels.
Third. Cool. I'm glad we cleared that up. You've never had a cigarette. I feel better about being you now.

And then I woke up very relieved.

The Time I Spent the Night at an Observatory

This morning I also dreamt that I was a white American teenage girl on an overnight fieldtrip to an observatory. This super cool kid in school—gorgeous, smart, artsy, shy, musical—performed something on the keyboard with his band in front of the class. He, of course, was in love with a popular cheerleader girl, and the bass player in his band, a nerdy girl, was in love with him.

We went outside to look at the beautiful stars stretching as far as the eye could see, and then we spent the night in the observatory. In the gray early morning, I found this super emo stud and tried to convince him to choose me over the cheerleader and the bandmate. Some other stuff happened, but I forgot them because I didn't write this down after I woke up.

The Time I Skipped Adolescence with Voodoo

Last night I dreamt I was a fourteen-year-old West Indian girl living in the eastern United States. I had a little friend, cousin, or half-sister who was like seven or something. Her hair was in those cute braids that stick out and have colored plastic barrettes on them. I lived with my dad in a small, dark apartment.

Then my cousin and I went to visit my aunt or her aunt or our aunt in London. The flight was long, but her place was much more open than my house and had wood floors.

The aunt was some kind of magic healer, and she gave us a spell that allowed us to travel through time. I decided immediately that my friend/cousin and I would travel five years into the future. I mean, being fourteen really sucks and it would be nice to skip it.
I had my cousin go first because she was littler. She spun around three times and repeated the spell after every full turn. Then she disappeared. The aunt nodded me on, so I spun around three times and repeated the spell after every full turn. I was a little late saying it on the last turn, so I was afraid it wouldn't work, but I blinked and there I was in the aunt's house with my friend, who didn't look any older, and things looked a little different. Some of the buses out the window looked sleeker and more plasticy, and a bright LCD billboard had been installed outside.

The aunt came in the room. She had more gray in her hair and was wearing a different muumuu. She said something like, "There you are!" I asked why we didn't look older, and she said it was because we'd skipped five years rather than living them out. I thought about it and was okay because even if my body was still fourteen, my birth certificate would show I was nineteen, so I could at least skip high school stupidity.

Then I thought about my dad. I had disappeared for five years! He must be worried sick. The aunt agreed with me. I ran out to go find him. First I went to the airport and used the magic powers that I apparently possessed to buy a $5000 ticket (inflation) to the US without money. But then the dream rewound a bit and I realized my dad had come to London to look for me five years ago and then stayed just in case I appeared there. He had been drinking a lot the last time the aunt saw him, and that was a couple years ago. I went to a scary part of East London to find him, afraid he might be dead, and then I woke up.