Monday, September 28, 2020
Posted here March 8, 2022
One more gem from the Family Journal. It had been exactly one year since my retirement.
Just before the alarm went off, I had a weird dream: though I was retired, I was still working about eight hours a week at Woodman’s. I met a girl in the break room who was working 5 pm to 1:30 am with a half-hour lunch. I was sad because I hadn’t been able to play music publicly during the pandemic, but now I was supposed to do a concert at a church.
My mom (who died in 2005) met me at a local diner for coffee and a bite to eat. I fussed with picking up cardboard and putting it out of the way; the inside of the place looked like Woodman’s.
We were in another city (maybe Rochester, MN) and in a different car, a small station wagon. I was trying to follow someone to the church, but they were way ahead of me, so I used the Maps function on my phone. Just then, the car engine became very weak and stopped running altogether. The gas gauge (which ran from left to right) was on “E,” so I figured we were out of gas.
The young man in the passenger seat told me that he thought there was a gas station right next to where we were; he was just trying to help. “I’m the guy you married,” he told me. “You can’t be,” I replied. “I didn’t marry a guy. I married a woman. Where is Wendi, anyway?”
The building was empty; no one was there, and we couldn’t tell what the building was for, anyway. I recalled there being a gas station half a block away, down the hill. We pushed the car down there and were filling the tank when my alarm went off, ending the dream.