Applications, Visits, and Date Prep

I am applying to Teach For America and am really stressed about finishing some aspect of the presentation.

It is a gift-giving holiday (Valentine's Day?) and my sister, not able to find a present she wants to give me, builds complex, Rube Goldberg type apology gifts out of cardboard boxes, promising to get me something better later.

I start helping Mark prepare for some sort of presentation by holding cards he is putting together as visual aids. I accidentally bend one with my thumb and apologize. He seems sort of irritated with me, but not because of the dent in his card. Then I notice that the cards I am helping with are actually rough drafts and he has another set almost completely prepared. I look through these cards and discover that his presentation is for a later stage in the Teach For America application.

I am at an apartment complex where I used to live. I go up to a friend's apartment for a drink of water, but there is some major remodeling going on and I can't find a sink or water fountain. My friend who lives in this apartment directs me to the water fountain, which is in the entryway to a bedroom with three queen-size beds in it. As I'm getting my drink, someone wakes up and jumps out of the far bed. She seems to be upset to see somebody invading her bedroom. I then recognize this girl as Amanda.

Amanda enlists me to help her get ready for her big date with Chandler, a boy who only exists in this dream. Chandler was apparently part of my main social circle when I lived there. Amanda is planning to wear a fancy dress. I ask if this date is to a dance, and although I don't remember being answered, I understand that it really is. Amanda appears to be very smitten with and in a serious relationship with Chandler, judging by the way she gushes about him, her level of excitement, and the fact that he calls her and she immediately falls into calling him by rather obnoxious and sickening pet names.

At some point during this, I get the sash of the dress I'm wearing (a black with blue flowers dress, appropriate for church) caught on something, which unties it.

When she gets off the phone, I look at the dress she plans to wear. It is cut a bit low in the front, and I don't like the color, but I feel that she loves the dress and is committed to wearing it, so I try to sound like I approve.

Then we get to talking about Chandler again, and I now know that he is best friends with Dan. Amanda starts questioning whether she really wants to be going with Chandler tonight, realizing that she might like Dan better. Then she says that's alright, because she has a date with Dan in a day or two.

Knowing that Dan lives in a different state now, I say, "Now I'm confused," about to question whether she was really talking about Dan, figuring that I had missed some turn in the conversation. Then Dan steps around the corner and into view. So I say, "Now I'm less confused," while wondering if I really am, because now I wonder why Dan is here. Then I notice I am laying on the floor in my bathing suit, and I say, "And now I'm wondering when I took off my dress. Is this a dream? Because this would make sense in a dream."

I open my eyes and wake up.

Nerf War, Fundraiser, and Cotton Soccer

I am in Africa, fighting on the wrong side of a war with Nerf weapons. I also have a Buzz Lightyear suit. The good guys win. And at some point, I turn into a black man.

I reform and join an African tribe that I was trying to oppress. They give me face paints and face studs that I hope will hide my identity so all the good guys won't see me and think of me as evil. We come across a group of the good guys, and one of them comments that I look familiar. So I'm disappointed that the decorations aren't working as well as I'd hoped and worried that he'll figure out where he recognizes me from.

Then I'm going to some sort of fundraiser dinner with my family. I am back to being myself, except that I am still the reformed oppressor of Africans. One of the good guys from the group we ran into earlier is there in line with us waiting to go in - it might be the one who thought I looked familiar. He is wearing a blue, green, and white plaid shirt - a small, conservative pattern. It looks really nice. Anyway, I fall deeply in like with him. But Rachel talks to him and they go aside to get their picture taken together. I am very jealous.

Inside the fundraiser, I know that I will end up with good guy in the end. But for the time being, I am still jealous of Rachel. I start playing soccer with a cotton ball, the goal being a garbage can. I kick the ball up and it isn't quite going to make it into the goal, but a teenage boy nearby nudges it a bit and it goes in. He cheers and I pump my fist in the air.

Unauthorized Trip

I get up a bit early one morning and decide to go to my cousins' house before school. So I steal the family car and drive to Kamas, where I start playing video games with Jake (not a cousin). After playing for a while - my mind says a couple hours, although it didn't feel that long - I realize that I won't be able to get the car back before Mom notices it's gone and I might not make it to school on time. So I try to make my excuses and say goodbye, but Jake doesn't want me to leave.

Then my aunt and uncle get home. I try to hurry out of the house before they realize I'm there, because I might be able to get away with everything if I hurry to school, but my aunt and uncle know I'm not supposed to be at their place and will be sure to punish me in some way. But they come in the front door right as I am putting on my shoes to leave. They are really mad about something - not about me being there in particular; something else. But their being mad makes them a bit more harsh with me. They don't do anything or even signal that they think I shouldn't be there, but I feel harsh disapproval.

Then my oldest cousin from that family comes in. He says that a cop, who the family does not get along with, has said there is a surprise outside. So we go out and there is a ticket on my car because I am not allowed to be parked where I am - in front of the house - because I am  not at the house. This is blatantly untrue and I want to appeal the ticket, but everybody from the family argues against me, because there is no way to prove it and they have appealed too many times before for similar matters, so won't be able to win this one, too. So I have to pay for a ticket I got because the cop doesn't like my cousins.

I start to drive home, but I don't remember the way and can barely manage to drive straight, and can't  brake fast enough, so I rear end a car at an intersection. And the roads randomly switch lanes, so that I have to go from driving on the left side of the street to driving on the right side. Even though I had actually started out driving on the right side, so it must have switched before and I didn't notice. And the whole time, I have no idea where I'm going and just choose where to turn through whimsy.

Then I stop somewhere and steal some dollar toys from a giant woven ball thing they are rooted to. It is definitely stealing and I shouldn't be doing it, but it feels like about as serious a crime as jaywalking is generally considered to be.

Different Grandma and Weird Church Dinner

My grandma is a glamorous blond who performs with her choir in a big Christmas program, broadcast on television. My family goes to see her in it, but we do not all sit together. After the program, we all go to a sacrament service - just the sacrament, not an entire sacrament meeting.

The sacrament bread is formed and arranged in the shape of Jesus. There are a few tables set up in this way. One of them, the one closest to me, is on a table that moves to show that Christ is being resurrected. Then all the bread goes into a large banquet-hall type place that is located underground, through some doors which, in a real church cultural hall, would be where the tables and chairs go under the stage. There are already several Jesus bread sculpture things under there. But when we go to eat, the bread has turned into a variety of other foods, like you would see at a more normal church dinner, and is no longer in any particular form - it is all arranged, once again, as a fairly normal dinner at a church function.

Mario TV and a Complicated Relationship

I am watching TV with Gwen and at least one other girl and a guy. The show is an early Mario game. None of us is playing, the game is just showing on the screen. Then Jason shows up. He has been in California and the sun burned him pretty badly and bleached his hair to a peroxide blond color - in the sort of highlighty pattern that real sunbleached hair would take. It is around either Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Gwen, the other girl, and I stand up to let Jason through to sit on the couch and watch with us. After a short break, I find myself looking for a good place to situate myself to watch something else on TV. All the seats are taken, so I decide to lay on the ground in front of the TV, trying to get in a position where I can see the screen clearly but not look very appealing to Jason, because we had dated previously but now we need to be just friends and I don't want to do anything to make that harder for him. Or something like that. There are also some slightly awkward conversations involved, where I want to speak to him as someone who I am close to but feel that would not really be appropriate.

Then it is shortly before the holiday and Jason and I are with my extended family. They treat Jason like one of the family, and for a while I think that he is either  my brother or cousin. Then I realize that he can't be, because we didn't know each other as children. We had actually met within the last year or so. And knowing that we aren't actually related, I can't figure out why it is that we aren't supposed to be dating.

Then somebody, or several somebodies, starts singing Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters.

Clothing-People

I am at a clothing store with Mom, looking through racks of pajamas. I find some blue footie pajamas I like but Mom  won't let me get them. She gives me a reason, but I don't understand it. On the same rack, I find another set of pajamas of the same style and size, although this set seems bigger - but the size on the tag is the same. Mom is perfectly fine with me getting these ones.

We look around at the other clothes in the shop and a saleslady mentions that all the clothes - except for my new pajamas - are to be shipped out to an area that has recently been flooded. There are several other items of clothing that have the same thing wrong with them as the first set of pajamas I liked. Turns out that these clothes are actually people that have for some reason turned into whatever it was they were wearing.

I go to somebody's house - or mansion - and there is a jacket there that had been a person previously. My friend who lived in the mansion has been inspired to paint a picture of a person in this jacket. We find another portrait of a boy in the same jacket, which said friend had never before seen. When we compare the pictures, it is obviously the same boy. My mother also felt inspired to make a picture of a person in one of the people-clothes. We also find a matching picture for her drawing. We use these pictures to convince everybody that these clothes really are the people in the pictures. We also somehow learn that the people will someday return to life.

Then I am at a wide hallway or intersection at a mall, next to an elevator. A couple friends are with me. We somehow know now that the people who turned into their clothes are people who made suicidal jumps, not intending to die. In order to bring them back, somebody else must do the same thing. One of my friends, a girl, volunteers. We get into an elevator to go up a floor, where she plans to jump off the second-story walkway onto the first floor area where we had been standing. Another girl, part of a group of stuck-up bully-girls, wants to know what we are up to and tries to come with us, but I push her out of the elevator as the doors close. Her coat gets stuck, and the elevator pulls her up. I try to tell the elevator to go back down, but for some reason can't touch the buttons. Eventually the coat comes free from the elevator doors and the girl falls to the ground and dies.

My friend does the jump to bring the clothes-people back to life. Her body briefly disappears leaving a pile of clothes, but then she also returns. Because the bully-girl did not intend to jump, she is just dead.

The only person, besides myself, who corresponds to someone I know in real life is my mother. And I don't remember anyone in the dream as having a name.

War Prisoners

The year is 1992 and we are in the middle of some sort of  holocaust. I'm not sure what group is being persecuted, but my family and I belong to it. My youngest sister, who is somewhere between two and five and who should not yet be born, get captured and separated from the rest of the family. We are given a task to pack up two sets of survival kits - mostly consisting of toys, with some cookies and candies. We are taking this very seriously, trying to get it done in the time allocated, when we are told that it really is not a very important task and that our captors don't care how well we do and won't look closely at our efforts. I am not entirely convinced and still try to get it all put together properly until we are almost out of time, so I just rush to get things packed and take my sister and the boxes to a classroom place we are supposed to meet up in.

None of the other captives have their boxes with them.

I see Blake sitting in a seat towards the front of the room and take a seat a few rows behind. After I sit down with my sister, I decide to drop off our packages where I suddenly know they are meant to go. So we get up and put our efforts down in this place, where nobody else has dropped anything off yet. I try not to let the guards see that we are the ones attached to these offerings, because I am aware that we fell a little short on the standards given. Then we go to sit back down, but we can't return to the seats we had before. So we go somewhere near the front. I am uncomfortable with where we sit, because I think that's where Blake had been sitting, but he isn't there yet. Then I realize we are on the second row back, and no sane person would voluntarily take seats so close to the enemy at the front. So I realize that Blake must be sitting a little behind us now. I try looking  back for him but am unable to find him.

Blake and I are both around our current ages.