Dream Journal

This weekend in Milwaukee, my parents revealed that they usually always remember their dreams. "Do you?" they asked me and I had to say "no, generally not, but mostly because I roll out of bed full of panic in the mornings for no real reason and that is not an environment conducive to remembering dreams".

No worries, the panic generally subsides after about a minute, but it's true - this urgency replaces all other thoughts in my brain when I open my eyes. Why? I have no idea. I'm getting a kitten this week though and I'm hoping that will help.

This morning was different, though. Last night I fell suddenly asleep at about midnight and slept for about 10 hours, but it doesn't feel like it, because my subconscious spent that time DOING EVERYTHING. Normally I neither remember my dreams nor share them with people, but today is different, because you guys: Dream Nazis stole my purse. I am not kidding.

I was on a bus trip, riding past the Alps with two friends, who were a few seats ahead. The bus was packed with people and their stuff, and I had a vague notion that we had long passed the place where I was supposed to get off. "Stop, you guys," I said, "we've got to get off here and look for another route, this one isn't going where we need to be," and my friends acquiesced - we pulled the chain and the bus pulled into a station, and basically slowed down long enough to push us out. We hopped through the doors, our luggage was tossed out the side, and the bus rolled merrily on its way.

"Wait," I said, "WHERE IS MY BAG."

The friends shrugged. Theirs was here! They stood, enjoying cigarettes, while I pawed through the heap of luggage, and still - no backpack or purse. Oh my god, where was it? Had I left it on the bus? I paced back and forth, searching madly.

"Everything is in there, you guys," I said.

"No big deal," faceless friend 1 said. "I have a purse you can borrow."

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, I NEED MY WALLET," I howled, and combed and combed again, and off to the side I saw a cave, and I marched in and asked if anyone in there knew where my bag was.

The enchantress inside - who resembled Carmen, another fiction writer here - said, "No, but I have a glass in which we can search for it."

"A glass," I said, "a scrimshaw glass?"

"Certainly," she said, and we concentrated on it and it produced the most magical series of colors.

"I know where it is," she said suddenly, and we were outside a shack, and it was 1941. Outside, the villagers were buried up to their waists in sand, while indoors a group of blonde Nazis, their boots up on the desk, played cards and drank whiskey.

"Do you know where my purse is?" I whispered to a grandfather and little girl, who stared at me, silty and somber, and nodded, pointing indoors. I barreled in, leaving Carmen the enchantress outside to guard my friends and their bags, who'd wandered over to 1941 as well.

I don't know why my purse was the most important thing in all of this, but I do know that I found it easily, in the laundry room. Everything seemed to be in order! My clothes had been pawed through, but I rescued them from the Nazi laundry room and shoved them into a garbage bag, for easier transportation. A bottle of tequila was half-drunk, but you know those Nazis, always drinking everything. I wandered into the room where the Nazis were playing cards and said,

"Damn it, Nazis, why'd you take my purse?"

and the soldiers shrugged, sort of guitily, caught in the act. They understood what was going on, but didn't quite understand my words, and I wanted to shame them properly, so I barked it at them in German.

"WARUM HABT IHR MEINE WERTSACHEN GESTOHLEN?"

Then they were somber, and impressed, and they apologized, they said they didn't realize I'd be so serious about wanting it. I nodded and marched out to thank the silty villagers, shaking with righteousness. Then I took further stock of my valuables. Everything else was there, but the only thing missing was my smartphone. Oh god - had the Nazis had used the superior future technology to build some kind of bomb? I stared back at the shed, worried.

Luckily, no. Yaa, another fiction writer, wandered out from the shack, where she'd apparently been taking part in the card game, and she told me, "It's there, in the bottom of your bag, the way it always is. You know, it sort of gets lost in there, and I made sure they didn't notice it..."

I felt for it - yes, there it was. The Nazis had plainly missed out. I said, "Thanks, Yaa," and we all high-fived, and then I woke up, and laughed out loud in my cold bedroom.

Lessons learned: beware of Nazis, keep track of your valuables, and if you think you've lost your phone it's probably just buried beneath all the crap in your purse. Thanks, dreams.