Dream Diary - Pool Tournament

I had a pretty strange dream last night. It had something to do with my blindness so it caught my attention more than most dreams I have.

In the dream, I was in this bar *& grill that I worked in as a cook a long time ago. The owner of the bar used to hold these little pool tournaments, and that’s what was happening in the dream. I was playing in the tournament, along with my brother Kevin, my friend Jon Nutter, and another guy named Mark Krueger. Mark was a friend of Kevin’s back in high school.

So I guess it was just the four of us. I was drawing up a playoff grid for us and putting down each person’s initials where they were supposed to play. I was supposed to play in a game against my friend Jon. We were just getting ready to start our game, when the dream skipped a little.

There were some people sitting at tables watching us play pool, and suddenly I was standing there talking to one of them. It was Brian Kroll, someone else I knew in high school but haven’t had much contact with since. He has a beard now, but in the dream he looked the way he did in school. He was asking me about the farm I live on now., and I was explaining that I just live there, I don’t farm it because I’m blind and drawing social security and everything. Then he was saying that he might turn me in because he didn’t really think I was blind, seeing as how I was playing in the pool tournament and all. I told him to go ahead if he wanted because my blindness had been certified by a doctor.

Then I was back to the pool game, but now I was playing against my dad instead of Jon. I was trying to line up a shot, but was havng a lot of trouble. I would look at the pool table, noting the positions of the balls. Then I would move around the table and look from a different angle, but everything looked different. Back and forth I went trying to figure it out. Finally I counted how many balls were on the table. There were six. So I turned to Dad and said “How many balls are there on the table?” and he said “Nine.” The overall feeling was that I couldn’t see the table properly because of my blindness.

Well, then my brother, Kevin, came over to the table and started moving the balls around. I got mad and decided to leave. On my way out I saw a policeman just kind of standng around. I was scared that I would get in trouble because I was playing pool when I was supposed to be blind, and I wanted to aboid going near him.

I made it out without incident, and the next thing I know, I’m driving down a country road going home. I was in the car I had in high school, a 1971 Ford. The car wasn’t running very well, but I wasn’t very concerned about it. I was thinking that if I was going to be driving this car again, I would have to get a stereo in it. It only had the old A.M. radio that was in the car originally. The last thing I remember is thespeedometer. I looked down at it and the numbers going across were like, 17, 33, 63, etcetera, instead of 10, 20, 30. Of course, that didn’t seem odd at all.

I have no idea what any of that means. Such a weird jumble of people and places and ideas. But I guess dreams are that way. I’m a little disturbed by the overall sense of guilt at not being as blind as I should be. I’ll have to think about that.

There’s one more little dream fragment that I want to note, but this was not part of the pool tournament dream. It’s not really clear at all; I just remember something about my high school, my band teacher, pop machines, (or soda machines if you’re not a mid-westerner), and a guy that I worked with at my last job. That guy, Ken, is the significant part. In an earlier post, I said that I didn’t have any friends at my job, but that wasn't completely true. Ken and I would talk sometimes or go to lunch once in a while, although we never saw each other outside of work.

Anyway, Ken emailed me shortly after I moved up here. It was just a quick, “How ya doing" email, and I sent him a quick one back and that was it. Then last week I got another email from him asking me to call him. I've been debating whether to call or not. Part of me wants to leave that part of my life behind and not look back. Also, I hate talking on the phone. I've been saving the email with his phone number, and last night I had finally decided to just delete the email and forget it. But before I did, I decided to ask God. I asked Him if I should call Ken or not, then I closed up my email for the night. Lo and behold, Ken showed up in my dream last night. So I suppose I'll have to call him, darn it. I really hate talking on the phone. Oh well, you gotta do what you gotta do. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Job 33:15-17 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, That he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.