Dork Dance and (Not My) Wedding Anxiety

I am on vacation with my family, and my parents have decided that it would be beneficial to our cultural knowledge to visit a theme park. The theme park is located on a rocky cliff, and the manager directs our car into the cave so we can begin the ride. The whole thing is really sketchy and makes me really uncomfortable, like the bad circus, and I keep telling my mom that we should quit, "before it's too late." The path we drive down is very narrow, crumbling at the edges, where it drops down about five feet to moats of lava on either side. We proceed at a crawling pace in the Mini Cooper so as to avoid the campus squirrels and cardboard vampires that keep popping up. Finally my mom gets tired of waiting for the exciting part, so we reverse out of the cave, which is only about twenty feet long.

I return to my hotel room to make a flower arrangement, only to find the math team staying there. I happen to know one of the guys from somewhere random, so I decide I should chat with him so I don't appear unfriendly. While we are chatting awkwardly some music starts playing on the stereo, and I get really excited, thinking everyone is about to start dancing, and things will loosen up a bit. I exclaim, "Come on, we should dance!" and start grooving.
The guy just stares at me and goes, "Uhhh..."
"Come on, this is a great song!" He just looks around at his teammates, and I look at them too and see them all standing motionless, slouching and staring at me. I should have realized that of course the math team would never know how to dance, but I am the huge dork in this situation.

Later someone else has Garett's (my sister's fiance's) green bike, and they want to ride somewhere with me. In the gift shop of Fontainebleau I realize I'm supposed to be in love with this person. I decide I will act like I am for a while, because it must be part of the plan where we pretend like we're in love for a while. Then I realize I actually am in love with the person, and they are in love with me, but I feel terrible because I've only just now realized I really love them, so I must have been lying to them for a long time out of convenience. I want to tell them the truth, that I finally love them and only now found out, am too scared to say anything because they will probably hate me for lying for so long.

In Which We Have A Grand Time

We are all in Aaron's Ford Explorer: Sally, Holly, Anna, Kellen, Andrew, Aaron, Courtney and myself. It is early morning, they are all eager to be off. I race back from buying a granola bar from a vending machine underneath a stand of trees and hop into the moving car.

We arrive at a store. The entryway is a little dumpy, dusty, and crammed with useless stuff. Everything is a faded grey-brown. Moving into the next room, the treelike architecture remains, but the rooms are white and very spacious. The ambient lighting seems to emanate from the floor. There are display stands of shoes, and out on the balcony there are designer suits an strings of beads. It seems that there is some sort of high-class function going on, like an art show but with clothing. A large man in a purple suit sips his martini while his buxom blonde companion laughs at a private joke.

We are done shopping, people seem to have gotten what they need. We pile back into the car, and Courtney drives us off into the woods. I sit behind the driver's seat, and on a tray table in front of me there is a touchpad, like on a laptop. Courtney jokingly lets go of the wheel, and I find that by pretending there is a small steering wheel flat on the touchpad, I can control the car with my pointer fingers. I push forward, and the car lurches onto the road. Everyone seems to think Courtney is still driving, so she puts her hands in the air. Everyone screams delightedly as I clumsily speed us down a dirt road through trees.

Goat Car and Another 'Semireal Unfortunate Scenario' Dream

My brother is taking me out to Burien to get lunch with one of his friends. To get there we take a route down Ambaum, and when we get to the Baskin & Robins, which is a shady taco joint in the dream, we must take the most direct route through it before the owners get back. We walk briskly through the seating area and into the dirty back room, which is tiny and triangular, but with high ceilings. The only way out is through the small drive-thru window, which is very high up on the wall. Nick's friend goes first, then Nick, and finally I crawl through, contemplating Rikyu and the humbleness-inducing crawl-through entrances to his tea houses.

When I emerge, Nick and friend are nowhere in sight, but I am almost bowled over when a booming "EH-EH-EH-EH!" echoes through the neighborhood, and a giant old station wagon decorated as a goat barrels down the hill sans driver. It drives past me and turns to go up the next hill, periodically making goat noises. As I look around an obese black man steps out from behind some bushes on Kathryn's old street with a jolly chuckle. He clutches a crudely made remote control with a joystick, and tells me, "It gets 'em every time, and the fun never wears off!" My shock wears off and I laugh with pleasure at the man's joke. Nick and friend emerge from around the corner the goat wagon just passed, exclaiming at the genius of the social experiment.

The man directs the goat wagon over to us and parks it, and we all drink glasses of milk from the roof of the car. The man says he can't stand that watery milk, he needs something of more substance, and pulls out a carton of heavy cream. I jump up and pour it into a cup for him, but then he pulls out a stick of butter from his pocket to mix in. I stir the milk, now more than a little revolted, and wonder about the moral implications of serving pure fat to an obese man.


I am on vacation with Kris and his entire family, including the cousin I haven't met. His sister wants to go for a bike ride, but no one else is ready to leave yet. I don't plan on going, so while she is waiting she asks me questions about school, and then Julie says something that implies Mali was an art history major. Then she pulls out an envelope that supposedly includes her final grades, but the name on the envelope is not Mali, but an alternative spelling of the name Rebecca. I say, "Wow, I'm really embarrassed now, but I honestly thought your name was Mali and you majored in something like archeology or classics."

Then suddenly Kris comes up and says, "I want to get back together" and starts kissing me before I can get a word in. I find myself kissing him back, and realizing how wrong that is I halfheartedly try to get him to stop, mumbling his name. After about a minute of this I start to wonder why he hasn't stopped kissing me, so I say louder, "Stop! ...Beth!" Woah, wait, have I been saying everyone else's name but Kris' this whole time? "Why.. did I ...just say ...Beth's name?" I ask. "I mean... Stop! Kris!" Finally he pauses and I struggle to find words. I say something stupid like, "There's absolutely no reason I should allow this" and then trail off, wondering what I'm trying to say.
Kris is very persistent, not by saying much (other than "I want to get back together..."), but we still end up on the ground. While I know Kris doesn't actually want to start a relationship again (and neither do I) I don't have the energy to call him out on it, or the will to make him stop kissing me and END ALL INTERACTIONS IMMEDIATELY type of thing, so I decide to go along with it for the moment. I tell Kris that's fine, and get up to get breakfast, while he goes off to take a shower.

In the kitchen, I contemplate the English muffins, more than a little pissed. In the bag there is one half of a muffin, on top of the last whole muffin. I decide I want a whole muffin, so I take it out and cut it in half. This is when I notice that there is also half a muffin sitting at the bottom of the bag and I could have taken that and not cut up the last whole muffin.
That pushes me over the edge. As I stand there staring at the muffins with a knife in my hand, getting angrier, I decide Kris needs a taste of his own medicine, and if he's going to pretend he wants to be in a relationship with me, he's going to have to live up to the responsibilities. I am disturbed from my thoughts when his mother comes up and asks me if I've seen him recently, and I say I think he's in the shower. She asks if I will go tell him she wants to talk to him, and I say yes, quickly forming a plan in my head.
It goes something like this: If Kris wants to get intimate under the false pretense of wanting a relationship, things are going to get real intimate- and real inconvenient too, as goes with the responsibility of a relationship, right?

So I march down to the basement, planning on barging in on his shower time and demanding intimacy, but when I get down there, I can't barge in because the door to the bathroom, and the shower for that matter, are wide open. I am caught off guard, so when I get to the bathroom door, I stop and say, "Hey Kris."
And he says normally, "Hey. What's up?"
I'm feeling comfortable and say, "Not much."
"Really?" he says, kneeling down in the shower, as if posing for a gesture drawing. I am about to respond when I see he has some serious bruises on his legs.
"Yeah, hey- what are those bruises on your legs?" He looks down and examines them. "-If you don't mind my asking-" He looks at me and opens his mouth, and I can tell he could answer me if he wanted to, but instead he's about to tell me something completely different, and be open and honest for once. I know that as soon as he says this thing I am going to be able to talk to him about knowing he doesn't really want a relationship but being ok with that as long as he's honest; and we will be able to talk about what we really want without saying anything wrong.
But just then his mom comes up behind me. I didn't realize she had followed me down there, and so I quickly say, "Oh yeah, and I just wanted to tell you your mom wants to talk to you," and leave.

Man, I am a terrible host

Kory takes our class on a field trip to show us the three "principles of dance":

Number one is a fake scepter placed on a velour cushion. I lead the group up to the porch of the cabin to look at the scepter, but everyone crowds behind me so I pass by quickly.

Number two is one of those poles you slide down on a big toy, with a curved top. When I approach I give Kory a skeptical look, and he sighs and says, "Envision a flagpole!" So it's a curved flagpole... I kind of get it.

Number three is a station wagon on a platform perched on top of a large pole. This one I just don't get. When we look questioningly at Kory he uses a remote control to tilt the station wagon; something spills out. We tell him to stop, the car is about to fall off. He tilts it again, and several small objects spill out and clatter to the ground like pop cans. The car slowly topples off, and we all run and take cover in great fear of the small objects inside the car (beetles?). I hide in the big toy for an unnecessarily long time. When I come out my mom is frosting cookies on the porch of the cabin. I help for a while, frosting some bundt cake from a paper sack filled with blue frosting.

I walk around the corner of the cabin to find myself on the playground at Shorewood. Kyra, some other familiar friends, and I take turns on the slide. As we slide, I ask Kyra questions about her upcoming surgery. She is optimistic.

I have some assignment that I'm late finishing for school, so I decide to go early to work on it. I walk down the Burke-Gilman trail and end up on Lake Union under I-5. Alex is there, and I stop to talk to him, and then I continue on, now wading through the water. When I pass under the University Bridge and arrive at my my desired destination, and start to climb up the bank to get out of the water. Too late, I notice the muddy structures around me moving- they are trolls! No one ever told me there were University trolls! They seem to jsut be waking up from a nap, so I hope that if I climb quickly they won't notice me. Then my shoe gets stuck in a hole in the wall, and when I turn I see another troll climbing out of the water after me, a dead fish in its mouth. I consider screaming, but decide against it.

On land I find my way to a designated study area, which is a small patch of grass next to the Burke-Gilman where about nine people already lay in a grid formation. When I get there I feel sleepy, so the natural thing to do is lay down. I wedge myself in an empty slot and arrange my stacks of books around me. Chris, a guy from Solstice who always orders "short americans" is there, telling a friend that he is in my French class as well as in another girl's senior seminar. This is not true, and it frustrates me, so I leave.

Back in my apartment, I am just waking up from a nap, when I become aware of a giant plasm television on the wall next to my bed. My eyes are closed, but I can see the colors from it on the insides of my eyelids. I can also hear that my mom and another family member or two are in the room. Listening to the program, it is a news interview. I hear "University of Washington Track", "New Zealand", and "Vinh". I realize they are about to interview my friend from my tea class, and I roll over and try to open my eyes to see the TV, saying groggily, "Hey, it's my track star! That's my friend!", which comes out as an incomprehensible mumble.
My eyes will not open. I focus all my energy on opening my eyes, but all that happens is I can see some very blurry outlines. Urgently I pry my eyelids open with my fingers, but I still cannot see. I let go and my eyes fall shut. Feeling as though I am on drugs, I sit up with difficulty in front of the mirror and try to open my eyes again. I suspect that the lids are actually opening, but my vision does not work.

Later, as I walk down the path to Shorewood Beach with a number of people I tell them about the incident over and over again.


Then Courtney and Kris had sex. This was not surprising to me, but Andrea was really concerned about it, especially that Beth would find out, so she devised a complex plan to drug all of our friends and somehow hypnotize them to forget about it. She invited all of the Academy 4.0s over to my house and prepared several dips that would cause everyone to fall asleep. There were also small, crescent-shaped pieces of sheet metal that she fed to the guests after they fell alseep for some reason.
The problem was that everyone arrived at different times, so we had to move the party out onto the patio, and then Megan Su wanted to make her own guacamole, and Andrea almost flipped out. I tried to pull her aside and tell her that maybe this wasn't worth it, and ask what the pieces of sheet metal were for, because they seemed really dangerous for someone to be consuming. Andrea didn't pay attention and told me to go feed more dip to the sleeping peole upstairs while she helped Megan make a new dip.

Let It Be

I am riding in the car with my mom through the middle of nowhere. The only monument in sight on the beige plain is a giant casino, which we leave behind. Finally, up ahead I spot a square building and parking lot. My mother begins driving insanely fast, and I assume it is a bank that we must reach before it closes, but it turns out it is just a cheap shoe store. We do several 360s on the parking lot as my mom tries to figure out if it is closed, and then we screech out of the parking lot back to the casino.

In the parking lot of the casino, I try to move about unnoticed, following someone. This is made easier by the fact that the cars are replaced by tall objects, somewhat like anthills. I catch up to the person I am following, and then some events take place which involve me giving a piggy back ride to this person, trying to dance while doing this, and him becoming paralyzed. My uncle arrives in the parking lot, and I gather from his presence that the paralysis of the person on my back is a hereditary disease that his family didn't want me to know about. He says nothing, being paralyzed, but I know he wants to.

The casino is also High School, and I am visiting Kelly Mason. She tells me about her schedule and I ask if she has much homework. She says she has a ton, and very little time to do it in, but her mother will help her by typing up her lab report. I laugh, wishing I could get my parents to help me with my homework when I am busy.
Kelly starts to say something else about her job, but I don't hear what she says, because I have begun singing "Let It Be". I look her in the eye, indicating that I can't stop now, and in any case singing is what's most important in this moment. Matt Kent understands and joins in.

We go to lunch in the cafeteria, where the cashier charges me $1.50. There is so much good food, I am amazed, and wish I could eat like this every day.