My mom and I were at a museum centered around ancient Greece. We were looking at specimens of pots and maps of old cities and stuff like that. There was one video display on a wall which was about the possibility of Atlantis being part of the Hellenistic civilisation. We watched that for a while, because it was pretty interesting. I told my mom how my Art History teacher from last semester, Michael Hoff, had discovered a lot of stuff in those areas (this is true--he's done a lot of cool things as far as discovering old Greek jazz) and then I cited some examples for her. As I stared at an island below the Greek mainland, I started to get dizzy.

Suddenly I was standing inside of a small circular structure with several other men. We had been responsible for guarding this building, but we managed to get distracted and let some enemy Greeks take control. We were now being held prisoner inside of the structure.

First there were arrows fired through holes in the walls. Some of my fellow soldiers were hit and killed. Then, through the small hole in the ceiling, acid was dumped onto us. Most of us managed to survive with just small burns from the splashing of the acid on the floor. Soon the door opened, and several armed soldiers came in. Their leader stepped inside, and I saw that it was Carla. She said "You PUKES have all earned the right to be executed by me personally." Then she pointed towards me and said I would be the first to die and she asked me how I wanted to be killed. I looked up to her and said "Burn me to death with acid, CARLA!!" and she goes "NEAL!! I didn't realise you were here!" and I said "It makes no difference--come on, kill me!" But she wouldn't do it, no matter how much I begged.

So we left and went downtown to a toy store. Of course I went looking immediately for Transformers. All of their Transformers were terribly overpriced, but luckily they had a bunch of generic ones that were a lot cheaper. What was cool was that they had a generic Optimus Prime that looked even cooler than the real Optimus Prime! I grabbed that one and kept looking. They had some that transformed into three things, and one of them changed into a robot, a race car, and a volcano. I was like "A volcano? What kind of stupid robot would want to change into a volcano? Some disguise that is! Like Decepticons are chasing him and he needs to blend in so he changes into a volcano. I can imagine them just saying 'Oh no, where'd he go?' 'I dunno, but look at that neat volcano that just came out of nowhere!' Yeah right, like they're gonna fall for that!" Carla got tired of my complaining so she got me out of that department.

Elsewhere in the store, I saw my mom and she and I went over to a darker section of the place. We noticed that it was an entrance to a museum about Ancient Greece. I sensed an infinite loop coming on, so I decided to leave.

I went to high school for some reason, I don't know, maybe I thought that it would be fun or something. Anyway, there were a whole bunch of tables with free stuff, sort of like the Big Red Welcome here at UNL. I picked up some random grab bags and such. Nothing special. I decided I wanted to go running, so I wandered on into the locker room to change. I went up to my locker and noticed that it was open. I was thinking "Dangit, every time I come to my locker in a dream it's standing open!" But then I remembered that I wrote the combination on the front of my locker, so it wouldn't be too hard to break in. Thankfully none of my stuff was gone, including my Batman watch (which should have been on my wrist, but oh well) so I changed into my running clothes and walked back out into the hall. Josh S, Mandy, and Sheri told me they were coming along so I was like "Okay, let's go then." I wanted to run out in the cross country course, but they were like "No, let's run pre-meet!" I said "Hey, you don't have to come with me, you know!" but for some reason I went with them. Grrr.

So we were running down P street when we went by Angelo's house. Something odd that should be pointed out--Angelo's house is on O street. It had moved. We didn't mind though. So as we were running by, we noticed the cellar door (that doesn't really exist) was standing open. Josh commented that we could go in the cellar from the outside and then go upstairs and scare Angelo. I said that I didn't want to, not only because I'm not totally fond of Angelo, but because I was running because I wanted a workout, and stopping a half mile after we started wouldn't exactly be very effective as far as workouts go. The rest of them agreed with that point, so we kept going. As we were running away, Angelo pressed his face to an upstairs window and stuck his tongue at us (playfully, of course). We all decided on the way back, that it'd be okay to stop since we'd have gone three miles.

We got inside and Angelo was waiting for us. He led us upstairs which was a pain for me because for some reason my body kept wanting to fall of the side. There was no railing, so that made it tougher. Some radio was on and it said "102.7, Lincoln and Savannah's New Rock Alternative" and I was like "Hey, how can it be a station for Lincoln and Savannah? They're like 1500 miles apart!!" But no one else cared. We got upstairs and sat around and talked and stuff. Angelo asked if any of us liked Frente!, and I said that I did. He said "Well, I got this Frente! t-shirt today at that giveaway thing going on at school, and I don't like 'em." I told him I'd gladly trade stuff that I got for that shirt. He asked me what I got, and since I didn't know I decided to look inside my grab bag things. Good thing I just happened to have them with me. Well, as it turned out, all I had was a Bridges of Madison County poster and a Thelma and Louise t-shirt. Oddly enough, he didn't want either, so I paid him $13 for the shirt.

The upstairs of his house managed to turn into my Fiction Writing class somehow. And in the middle of the room was a scale model of Auburn Nebraska. I started spitting on it. Then I started kicking it. Finally, I just sat on the thing. Susan, my teacher, yelled at me. "Neal!!" she said, "what in the world do you think you're doing?? I know you hate Auburn, but do you really think your extreme hatred is justified?" I said "Listen, Susan, you wouldn't know!! You've never lived there!! You've never had to put up with that place!!" She responded "Neal, I know you think it's bad, but come on, all small towns are like that. Auburn's no worse than any other small town." I said "Susan...listen to me...here at UNL, I have had PLENTY of opportunities to speak with other students from small towns...after talking with them extensively about our respective towns, they agree with me that Auburn is in fact the boil on the face of Nebraska that I claim it is!!" She had no response and turned away.

I went downstairs and found myself in my Grandpa and Grandma Obermeyer's home. Kendal, my cousin, was there. She said to me "Get me a national weather map for this Saturday morning at 7 am, dangit!" I made a mental note of that.

The weekend was over so I returned to Lincoln. The first class I had that week was calculus. Since I had been gone, Oldfather had, well, changed. It now looked all dark and industrial. Almost futuristic, like it was from Terminator 2 or something. My calculus class consisted of Auburnites Josh A, Mike, Brian M, Melanie, Brandy, and Jodie, and then Jocelyn, a girl I know from UNL. Class was uneventful for the most part, except for one time when Jocelyn got upset and chewed out Mr. Peterson (the teacher).

After class, Mike, Josh, Brian, and I stayed in the room. You see, the classroom was on a giant trampoline. The floor wasn't solid. So when Mr. Peterson was gone, we all started jumping on the floor and getting launched into the ceiling. It was good fun. However, Mr. Peterson heard the noise and came back in and yelled at us. Mind you, he is not a mean teacher at all, but he was afraid we'd break something or hurt ourselves. He kicked us all out. We got in the elevator and went down. I stopped and got out before we got to the bottom floor. Then I went back up the stairs to the 8th floor where class was. I sneaked around through other classrooms (there were no halls on this floor--just connected classrooms) that were all watching a Peter Jennings-hosted special called "Does Jesus Walk Among Us?" until I got to the doorway of my math class. I darted through the door and saw exactly what I was anticipating--Mr. Peterson was jumping on the trampoline floor. He saw me and we had a good chuckle.

I got back in the elevator and there was a woman holding a large white washtub. Two floors down, another woman got in, but even though the elevator was practically empty, she reacted as if it were completely packed. She stood over by the woman holding the basin and offered to help. Several floors later she got out, so I helped the tub-holding woman until we got to the bottom.

So I needed a cab to get to Pizza Hut where the guys from Calculus were going to be (don't ask me why I wanted to go). I was standing in a parking garage waiting for a taxi to drive up, when this man walked in. He was a late 30's-early 40's man with a black moustache and two days' growth approximately on the rest of his face. The stains on his shirt and jeans suggested he had been working underneath a tractor for the past week and a half. He approached me and asked "How many gallons do you usually get in your car when you fill it up?" I knew the answer was 12.5, because my car has a 12.5 gallon tank, but I didn't want to reveal that valuable information, so I said "Oh, 10 to 15." That wasn't a lie; it was just more vague than I had to be. His response was to yell what I just told him, and he ran over to another person who had just driven into the garage. "How many gallons do you get when you fill your gas tank?" I didn't hear the person's response, but I could tell from the man's reaction that it wasn't what he wanted to hear. A sharp-dressed man (that ev'ry girl's crazy 'bout) walked up to the dirty gas-obsessed fellow and asked "What exactly is your problem, sir?" The dirty man said "My wife's over there in my truck" and he pointed across the street. "She needs to get to the hospital right quick like, and I don't know if I gots enough gas in my truck!" The slick guy said "Tell you what--how about you give me your truck, and I'll let you have my truck. It's got a full tank of gas." The dirty man agreed right away and asked which truck was now his. The slick guy pointed to an orange state department pickup and said "There. That's my truck--you go ahead and take it." So the dirty man got in it and drove off to the hospital WITHOUT HIS WIFE. Stupid man.

My taxi drove up and I got in. There was nothing good on the radio, so I decided to call up Disc-Go-Round and request a song. This is odd because Disc-Go-Round is a music store, and you just don't call up music stores and request songs to hear on the radio. It just doesn't work that way. Well, anyway, when I called, the employee thought she would be funny and pretend she wasn't really a Disc-Go-Round employee. However, I was on to her shenanigans and played along and WON. She confessed, saying "I'm sorry...this is actually Disc-Go-Round..." and a male employee picked up the phone. "Herman's Hoagies! May I help you?" I decided to play along with him too, so I said "Yes, I'm with a local advertising agency, and we think we have an excellent idea for your business. We would like to see you get Hulk Hogan as your spokesperson and change your name to Hulk Hoagies. Then we would like to see you invest in a large fiberglas Hulk Hogan statue to put in front of your store. The best part is, we would be willing to head this campaign for a very realistic fee." He also was outdone, and confessed "I'm not really with Herman's Hoagies...I'm actually a Disc-Go-Round employee...I was just kidding around." I laughed and hung up on him.

I arrived at Pizza Hut and went and sat down at the booth with Mike F, Josh A, and Brian M. In the booth behind me was Garth, the guy who runs Zero Street Records in downtown Lincoln (between 14th and Centennial Mall on the south side of O Street--suave little store) and a friend of his. I was talking to them, and Garth mentioned that he sings and plays bass. His friend said that he played drums. Then his friend goes "Don't you play guitar?" and I said that yes, I do. He followed up by saying "Well then we should form a band! Starting a band is a great thing to do with your friends!" Garth responded by saying "It's also a great way to lose friends." I was confused, because I don't know Garth well so I was surprised he was referring to me as his friend, and I had never seen this other guy before so I didn't know where he got off calling me his friend. I mean, he seemed like a nice fellow and all, but I didn't even know his name. So I said "I'll have to agree with Garth."

I turned back around and started talking to Mike, Josh, and Brian. Brian and I just ordered salad, as we were on some sort of diet. We were all discussing the events of calculus from earlier in the day when Brandy, Melanie, and Jodie walked up. They said "Hey guys, what are you doing tonight?" We all told them that we were going to go see Return of the Jedi. They asked if we wanted to come with them. We all responded at the same time, except the other three guys all said "Yes." I decided that if they really wanted to go to a movie with those girls, even considering who those girls were, I'd let them have their fun. So I left.

Return to The Dreams Page.