ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

I wonder, when we remember places in a dream, does it mean that we’ve dreamt them before? Last night I dreamed that my roommate and I were running from someone, and it was with great relief that I ducked into a familiar yard with a number of low, thick shrubs to hide us from our pursuer. From there I knew exactly where to go to find someone to help us. Now, as far as I know this place does not exist in real life. Waking, it still feels familiar, so I wonder whether it’s the case that I’ve dreamt it before but don’t remember, or if it’s the case that the dream just created an artificial sense of recognition?

Anyway, in the dream the man we met gave us this funny little scooter, the kind you see people riding around in warehouses, and it reminded me of something in real life, which woke me up because I thought it was really funny. At my warehouse job last month, the main boss used to ride around in this funny little red scooter that was raised up off the ground and had a tall orange flag attached to it. It looked just like he was going around in this little red chariot with the flag and everything, which looked incredibly silly. If I got nothing else out of that terrible job, at least I got a memory that will never cease to amuse me. How can a man be that self-important when he’s riding a little red chariot around a warehouse all day?

My current job working with medical records, which I started Wednesday, is pretty good. The main perks are that I work alone, no one bothers me, and everyone is fairly nice except this weird guy who I find vaguely obnoxious. Also, since I spend the entire time doing very mundane tasks—going through medical records and purging everything older than 2000 for long term storage on microfilm—I’m allowed to listen to music. It’s kind of interesting work, actually, since occasionally I notice a really strange injury with which someone was admitted. Now, I believe it’s illegal for me to tell anybody specific information about people or to mention anybody’s name no matter how weird it is, but I think it’s all right if I name my two favorite diagnoses so far, both of which have been for small children: “FISH HOOK IN SCALP” and “SWALLOWED KEY TO DIARY”. I’m so looking forward to having children one day. Or not.

By the way, I have been listening a lot to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. It is really freaking good.