Glieuaeiel's DJ

Rude Receptionist

I'm talking to a clerk at the front desk of the hotel at which we're staying. Somebody mentions cherries. I'm excited at the chance to practice my Spanish.

"Oh, oh, I know this one. . . . Cer--, uh . . . cerezas!" I grin around the room. "That's 'cherries' in Spanish. I learned that earlier today." [IRL, that's true. And during the dream, I used the memory trick that I invented yesterday for that word: "cereza" is sort of a combination of "cereal" and "cabeza."]

The clerk exhales, shaking her head. She says something about never being very good at Spanish, herself. I think she sounds too defeatist. Then someone comes into the hotel, and she calls him over. "Mr. Branagh!"

Surprised, I look closely at the newcomer. Indeed, it's Kenneth Branagh. I'm impressed at how calm the receptionist remains in the face of a movie star. I guess she's prepared for that, since actors probably stay in hotels a lot. Then she starts talking to him about all of these hotel policies about publicity posters. (He's carrying a bunch of posters, presumably with the intent to advertise his newest project by putting them up around the hotel.) It really seems to me that she's splitting hairs, and I realize she's not only being calm--she's being downright rude. Oh, dear.

Old-Fashioned Bathroom

I enter the bathroom in an old-fashioned wooden building. I'm not sure if I saw the sign correctly when I chose this door, so I might have gone into the women's bathroom by mistake. I look around to check, and indeed, most of the dozens of people in here are middle-aged women. I spot two other males, though, both my own age. Also, I'm using a urinal right now, which has no business being in a women's bathroom. As I'm looking around, one of the other boys says loudly that he thinks he chose the wrong bathroom. The other two of us assure him that there must be something unusual going on, because we made the same mistake. I wonder if maybe this bathroom was designed to be non-segregated. As in, there are two doors, one labeled "men" and one "women," but they both lead to the same room.

Runaway Grandmother

I hand my grandma a walking stick and turn around for a second, surveying the multi-story shopping complex that we're exploring. I hear gasps from behind me, and whirl around to see Grandma falling down the wide staircase behind us. It has a few dozen steps, and she bounces about three times on the way down. Then she gets up and starts hobbling away. She must have tried to put her weight on the stick and accidentally lifted herself off the ground, putting the stick off-balance and causing the whole assembly to fall over backwards, down the stairs. I probably should have given her a shoulder to lean on, or something. In any case, it's my job to go bring her back. As I head down the stairs, someone reminds me to be prepared for her to be stubborn about coming back: she gets recalcitrant if she's just been injured.

I run after her down a hallway and see that she's taken an escalator upwards. I get on behind her, but without missing a beat she climbs over the railing and onto a different escalator headed the same way. Wow, she really is being stubborn. I decide not to climb over--I'll just meet her at the top. But when I look ahead, I see that my escalator bends around and goes back down, while hers just continues straight up. Dammit, what an absurd design! It will be a disaster if she gets away. Even if I can't bring her back, I at least have to keep an eye on her. Now, there's another escalator following the same line as mine that goes halfway down before bending around to go back up. The semicircular railings of the two escalators come close enough that I should be able to climb over both of them. I'm reluctant, because the railing will be trying to pull me sideways as I climb over, so I could easily get injured. But I don't have much choice. I do it.

At the top, I realize that in all the confusion, I've lost track of Grandma. Did I get ahead of her? Is she ahead of me? Where might she have gone from here? Her distinctive gray hair is nowhere to be seen. Someone else from our original party comes walking up to me and asks me how it's going. I'm forced to admit that I think I've lost Grandma.

Pranking Little Kids

An old friend of mine laughingly shows me a small, simple geometric carving (similar to a die) with the word "BOOBS" on one side. He also shows me a table he's made, documenting the reactions of youngish kids when given this carving. These kids are all about the age where they'd be receiving their first sex education, so the idea is that they should be very embarrassed by it. It's amusing to us older kids since theoretically we know better than to be embarrassed by sex. Anyway, his results aren't disappointing: only one kid of the dozen or so he's pranked has managed to get through the encounter without blushing.

Maybe half an hour later, I give the carving back to my friend, joking that I couldn't find anyone who actually wanted to take it from me.

Legitimate Theft

A high school friend of mine is running around the house, but he's not supposed to be here. I chase him outside and confront him on the driveway. He's holding a roll of Smarties, and he's already opened it to start eating. Those were my family's Smarties. I'm just so confused as to why he'd do something like that. I try to communicate to him that if he asks nicely, we'd be happy to give him the Smarties--but that it's really not okay to steal them. He agrees. I tell him that he can keep the Smarties this time, but he can never, ever take anything from my family's house again. He agrees again, but then he confidently asks if he can just tell me something.

Uh oh . . . maybe he knows something that I don't. Indeed, he continues on to inform me that he already sent an email to my mom, to explain that he would be coming by today to steal some Smarties. He sent this yesterday, so she had plenty of warning. Hmmm. His use of the word "steal" in that email is strange, but if he got permission from Mom, I guess he didn't do anything wrong. Looks like I've just made a fool out of myself by lecturing him so much. I try to save what little face I can, keeping my confident tone of voice while I back away and admit that this was "my bad," and that everything he did was perfectly legitimate.