I had A Dream

One of the former taxi drivers, who no longer work’s for Yellow Cab, hired me to photograph his wedding. I agreed to do it and found myself at a fair sized church with my wife Kathy, and a large number of people, some of whom I recognized. There was construction going on in the area, so we had to drive around to find parking, and finally got inside and sat in a pew. There were about 50 people already there. I had my small black camera bag with me, instead of the large grey one that I normally bring to weddings, and I realized that I never checked to make sure that my camera and flash was inside, along with film and batteries. When I looked, there was one camera with a lens, a strobe flash and 2 rolls of 100 ISO film. I needed 800 ISO for the wedding ceremony, plus the 100 ISO film was an off brand that I was unfamiliar with.
So I decided to go find a store to get film and batteries at before the wedding began, even though I only had 15 minutes and was in an unfamiliar city. It took me a while to find the exit from the church, that wasn’t blocked off because of the construction going on outside. When I finally did, I started walking in a random direction, away from the construction and church, and found a large mall, like Salem Center. I knew that they would have to have a camera store, so I entered and found it. They had everything that I needed, but when I opened my wallet I only had singles and didn’t have enough to get everything, so I only purchased a 4 pack of 800 ISO film.

When I exited the mall, I ended up on a different street, so I was now confused where the church was located, and by now my back went out, so I was having a hard time walking, and had to drastically slow down. It now felt like one of those dreams where you are trying to run and can barely move, as urgent panic begins to well up inside you.

At this point, I either woke up and went to the bathroom, or dreamt that I did, and then continued on with the dream, like a commercial interrupted it. I was on the street trying to decide which direction to go in, and for some reason I decided to look in my wallet again. This time I saw 2 - $20.00 bills in the middle of some singles, and realized that I could have purchased everything.

By this time I was a couple of blocks from the mall, but saw a variety store that I went into. It was large and dim, with dark mahogany and glass display cases all around and in the middle, and was run by Indian or Pakistani people that included 1 man and about 4 young women. When I told them that I wanted to purchase rechargeable batteries, they said that they would have to take them out of the toys that were in the glass display case that was between us.

“Then just give me regular batteries,” I said, but they told me that they didn’t know where they were, so I left in a tiff, and was back out on the street, and decided to find my way back to the church, since I must be late by now, but didn’t have my watch on. As I found myself limping in slow motion down unfamiliar streets I realized that I didn’t know where I was, as I felt the cold clammy seed of blossoming terror germinating in my guts. At the same time I found myself drifting off into a waking state, and looked towards the alarm clock. It was around 9:45 AM, and I was planning on getting up at 10:00 AM anyway, so rather that chancing that I might continue with the dream, if I went back to sleep I got up. I was going to be driving the 3:00 PM to 3:00 AM shift tonight, and could write for a couple of hours before I had to get ready.