Rant #2,651: In Dreams

How did your Mother’s Day go?
 
Ours was fine, no problems at all, and it was a great day for all the mothers we celebrated.
 
We came home, I caught the ends of both the Yankees and Knicks games—victories—then watched some more TV—including the news, with that horrific story about more New York City shootings, the latest in Times Square—and then I pretty much conked out for the night.
 
But I had a nightmare, which woke me up in the middle of the night, and woke me up pretty unnerved.
 
I can’t really make it out, except a part of it, so here it is as a remember it:
 
I was back at my old place of work, but no, I wasn’t working there.
 
The previous owner changed it into a “communications business,” and she seemed to be the only one left from those that were there at the demise of the business that I worked for.
 
Anyway, why was I there?
 
I don’t know, but what I do know is that I did not get there by car, I walked there, which even for a sprite 64 year old, would have been quite an accomplishment, since it is several miles away from where I live.
 
But it would have been even more of an accomplishment due to what I was wearing.
 
I had on a T-shirt, but not pants--underwear, but no pants--and I was draped in a towel or a blanket that I used as sort of a sarong to cover myself up.
 
Not seeing anyone I knew there, I walked out this business for whatever reason in that wild getup. I got up and left, and started to walk down the main drag in that area—Old Country Road—to walk back home, again with my car evidently not part of this dream.
 
So I walked on Old Country Road, and shooting broke out. I saw who was doing the shooting and walked—or ran—back to the business as they began shooting at me.
 
I got into the building, and I asked the receptionist if I could use the phone to call someone to pick me up, because I wasn’t walking out of that building by myself again, not with an active shooter out there.
 
And then I woke up.
 
I was perplexed, and it took me a while to get back to sleep.
 
And then I got back to sleep, and I felt a grinding in my back, and I woke up again.
 
Evidently, neither my wife nor I ever took the remote off our bed before we retired that evening, and the thing was digging into my back at a very odd position, so I took it, put it where it belonged, and then had to go to sleep again, the memory of that dream still pretty vivid in my mind, and it still is to this moment.
 
The part about the shooting probably had to do with that shooting in Times Square, where three people were shot, one being a four year old.
 
One person shot was a tourist, and they told her that the bullet lodged in her leg cannot be removed without doing extensive damage to that leg—the cure is worse than the disease—so this 23 year old woman has to live with a bullet inside of her perhaps for her entire life.
 
Someone else was also shot, I think she was from New Jersey, but she evidently remains in the hospital.
 
Seeing story after story about this—and story after story about increased gun violence in New York City that seemingly nobody has the guts to deal with in a direct way—played off of me last night, and that is why I dreamt about it.
 
I remember several years ago, while at work, we all heard a succession of popping noises one day, and we brushed it off as tires going over glass and popping, and nothing more. It could have also been car mechanics working on cars right across the street at the service station many of us used for car repairs while we were at work.
 
Then, I remember the police came to my place of work, and asked about the popping, which evidently wasn’t cars going over glass or repairmen working on cars in the repair shop, it was out and out gunfire, right around the corner from where we worked, during the workday.
 
The other elements of the dream I have no idea about, but hearing constantly about escalating gun violence in my old environs of New York City has probably been playing on my mind, and that is why my mind incorporated it into my dream.
 
New York City was once the greatest city in the world, but it isn’t anymore, due to a variety of factors, including the lax laws there and in the entirety of New York State and the politicians that back these laws, which seem to protect the instigators more than the victims of crime.
 
Honestly, when I hear these politicians state that they do not know why gun violence is almost a daily occurrence in the city, I almost have to laugh, because it is so obvious why this violence has escalated—are these politicians so blind to the reasons why?
 
And when I heard that those innocent people were hit by bullets in Times Square, well, I guess I simply internalized it, and that is why it came up in my dream.
 
I hope to someday have another dream—that New York City and the entire world becomes a safer place to live in, and that gun violence doesn’t continue like it is now.
 
The problem is that I don’t know if we will ever be free of such heinous acts, as long as thugs and hoodlums rule the streets like they do today.
 
But rather than have another nightmare like I had last night, I hope to have better dreams—and hope for our civilization--in the future, hopefully starting with tonight.