The question bugged me, and I remember specifically thinking about it for a long time. I rolled it over in my head. Which one did I have? Then I looked over the options for the state program and it asked if I had purchased a specific plan (if so, which one) or if I payed into the general fund. If I payed into the general fund, how much did I invest, etc. It occurred to me that once in high school I’d won a scholarship for high test scores, and that fund had won me some interest over the years . . . perhaps that counted?

After trying to figure it out and being unable to, I decided to call an information line. The voice I spoke to sounded like a run-down shell of a human being which told me with a distinct boredness that the state program was basically the same as the private program, but run through the state. I said I loathed private insurance companies from the core of my soul, and I would like to give the state program a try.

If you follow my feed on facebook, you know I have a lot of crazy dreams. Mostly my dreams are about dragons, mad scientists or heroines on horseback who fly through a moonlit sky and save the day. This dream, though, was so real, and it felt like so many dull experiences I’ve had in my life . . . but when I awoke I realized it wasn’t real and never would be.

I admire visionaries like Dr. King who have seemingly impossible dreams of a better world, dreams they work toward in the face of unbelievable adversity, because I could never be like that. It’s not that I don’t have the strength to fight people or do things outside the social norm; I don’t have the strength to keep my hope alive in such a cruel world. Once, when I was a senior in high school, I stood up in front of hundreds of people at the local university and asked senator Fred Thompson how we could feel justified in demanding the disarmament of other countries when we are the only country to have used nuclear power on another nation during a time of war. I can stand up and speak out, but the thought of letting myself hope just for an instant that a much better world is possible and we refuse it makes me shudder. I hear about things that are happening in my country such as the recent supreme court ruling that allows corporations to buy congress, and it cuts into me. I feel like a battered and beaten runner who tries to keep moving even though suffering from brutal injuries.

Maybe I am simply not a big-picture thinker, and there are people in the world right now planning for a better America. Maybe before I die I will see a portion of my dream realized, but until then, I will say “I had a dream.”

Last night I had this crazy nightmare. I dreamt (yes, dreamt is a word, I looked it up) that I had the power to change reality with my dreams, much like George Orr in The Lathe of Heaven. With my new-found power I changed the flow of the time-space continuum and molecular structure of DNA in all beings. No longer helical, the new and improved DNA had more of a flux-capacitor shape. I could even draw it for you, it was so clear in my mind.

Anyway, supposedly in all my genius I misaligned the new flow of time-space with the flux capacitor DNA because shortly thereafter everyone died terrible deaths.

If you and everyone you know suddenly suffers massive cellular death for no apparent reason, it was all me and I’m totally sorry.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like everyone is still ok. Huzzah.

It starts off innocently enough; I’m in Ohio visiting my family there. My uncle and cousin Bill decide they want to go play darts. I was stressed out because I’d forgotten my makeup (in real life I rarely wear makeup, I didn’t even wear it to my wedding) and I totally suck at darts.

When we got there, my uncle had turned into Steve Buscemi and my cousin had turned into a woman. In real life, my cousin is actually gay, but to the best of my knowledge he’s never wanted a sex change. Apparently he got one sometime during the car ride, and well, who the fuck knows what happened to my uncle, but he was suddenly really good at darts.

As my Steve Buscemi uncle was amazing everyone there with his superior darts skills, a group of J-Rockers came over and started hitting on Billy. (What a Japanese rock band was doing in the middle of Ohio, I’ll never know.) The flirting turned into teasing, which got out of hand, so I broke it up. After throwing a plate at them, I yelled “Hey! Billy just needs to be herself. Don’t ever fuck with anyone in my family.” That’s when this dream really goes down the rabbit hole of weirdness.

The J-rockers were furious and they chased me out of the bar. Once outside, I realized we were in downtown San Jose, near the convention center. The J-rockers had turned into a group of girls (not much of a change, really, but anyway.) They chased me through downtown, throwing darts at me, and telling me that if I didn’t stop they were going to sue me. I yelled back that you can’t sue a person for running, and just as I said this I ran into the door of a hotel I hadn’t seen before. It was a HUGE hotel, bigger than the Marriot in San Jose (which is 26 floors).

The Marriot in San Jose from www.cdengineers.com

On the doors hung a “KEEP OUT” sign, but I walked in anyway.

The instant I closed the door behind me everything fell totally silent. There wasn’t another person in sight, only a huge, sprawling lobby. Instantly I noticed the decor was a very old style, like a hotel from the early 1900’s. The center of the hotel was open to the sky, so that it looked like a gigantic straw with rooms all along the edges. In the center of the room there was a huge, cube-shaped glass tank up on stilts, about 50 feet in the air, with a tiny ladder leading up to the top, but I had no time to look at that now. Quickly I darted down a set of stairs to my left which led through a door and into a very small, tight hallway which became smaller and smaller until it was barely a crawlspace. At the end of the crawlspace there was a door through which I could hear the sound of an older woman humming. I looked under the door and saw two feet—one was the foot of a young girl in Sunday clothes (white stalking, little black tap-dance type shoes) and the other foot was that of a dog. I had barely enough time to think wtf? When the door burst open and there was a wolf glaring at me. The wolf, standing on its hind legs and holding a tub of lipstick, had three normal legs and one human girl leg.

artist’s rendering of wolf woman. Media: MS Paint.

It appeared she had been putting on makeup, and was now incredibly angry that I had disturbed her. I hustled back down the crawlspace as fast as I could, running when I was able to. No matter how fast or slow I went, the wolf was just behind me, barking and frothing at the mouth. I ran through several doors and hallways of different sizes until I stumbled upon a ladder and began crawling up.

I went up through a few floors and then realized I was back in the lobby, crawling up the ladder which led to the tank. The inside of the tank was much bigger than the outside; it was a very large, snowy field. I walked along, wondering what the hell kind of hotel this was, when suddenly I saw a polar bear, sitting on a rock, reading children’s stories out loud to himself. When he saw me, he let out a huge roar, which sounded to me a lot like him saying “READ!!” but I didn’t move.

artist’s rendering of polar bear in snowy field, reading children’s books. Media: MS paint.

This was the wrong thing to do, because he stood up and chased me out of the tank. I jumped over the side, falling about 100 feet, and just before I hit the marble floor of the lobby, I woke up.