Emotionally able to leap tall buildings in a single bound

Thursday night I had this dream, this disco-y roller derby grocery delivery dream.

Mostly it was about these roller derby girls who dressed in really tight, spandex, sequined outfits. Some of them were Indian and it was very Bollywood. Very pretty, shiny, sparkly. On roller skates! Tejal was managing them. Which was how I was involved at all.

The setting was partly in a roller rink and partly in a swanky department store. Because there were also a lot of perfume-spritzing women around.

And my friend Marta was also there, consulting on costumes. Which initially I thought was odd, because she is so very practical, but then remembered that she has cute taste in clothing, and if they're wearing roller skates, there's no chance she'll put them in lesbian shoes.

It was all very girly and very high drama. Tejal was having personnel management problems. Because one girl hated her costume - too purple!, and another one wanted more sequins, and another was having a meltdown over the fact that she'd gained weight and she just felt like her ass was too big and couldn't bear to squeeze into her costume and perform.

I was more in the background, playing with beaded tassels on discarded costumes.

And then later in the dream, having slipped out of the disco drama, I was at my parents house, hanging out with my mom.

I was in the kitchen with Betty, who was talking about cooking dinner, when John Neighbor arrived. My John Neighbor, who really is only my neighbor at this point, and who Betty has never met. He had his arms full of grocery bags. Which he handed to Betty.

They clearly had a nice level of familiarity - the kind of familiarity my parents have with their own neighbors. Which made me realize that not only did they know each other, but that he regularly did her grocery shopping. Which was great, because Betty hates to grocery shop almost as much as I do.

But still. Very surprising that John Neighbor would not only be doing the shopping but schlepping it all the way out to the suburbs.

I asked why he was delivering my mom's groceries, and he said that actually, he'd just wanted an excuse to see me. And now that he was looking me in the eye, he could tell that at some point I'd started to really liked him.

So I admitted to him that after I got to know him a bit, I had, in fact, started to quite like him. And that I had been disappointed that that realization coincided with the point at which he stopped asking me out. And in real life, both these things are true.

And that's all I remember of the dream.

The next morning, Bob and I ran into each other walking into our building. I was all in my head about my dream, and, as Bob knows, I am prone to walking down the street not noticing my surroundings. I snapped back to reality just in time to recognize him.

When this happens, my reaction is often visceral. Seriously. You might see my head suddenly snap up, my eyes refocus. Surprise might be written all over my face. Sometimes I even kind of jump a little. Like, oh, hey! look! it's the planet Earth! I've always wondered what it was actually like! Hi! Hi other human!

And then I can either laugh at myself. Ha. Or try to pretend I was here all along. Like, heh, I'm normal! In fact, I'm breezy!

As an explanation for my recent return to our planet right before his eyes, on an ordinary street in downtown DC, I relayed the dream to him. I finished just as we arrived at the door of our suite.

He held the door for me and said, "That's crazy. Dreams are so weird. Roller derbies. Sequins. The neighbor. What do you think it all means?"

"Nothing. Nothing means anything and I'm going to die alone."

He reeled backwards a little, and spread his arms as wide as they will go, which is really, really wide, because he is very tall.

And said, 'Wait! How does one little human being get from roller derby," gesticulating with one hand, "to here - here being dying alone," motioning wildly with the other hand, "that fast?"

I shrugged.

And thought, but didn't say, oh, Bob, you have no idea how fast I can mentally whip through 20 years of a relationship on a first date. No idea.