Dream a Little Dream for Me, Mister Z

I have been entertained by some wild and crazy dreams this week.

I blame the generic Z-pack I'm taking for my sinus infection. That's got to be it. I have been taking a pill around 8:00 p.m. They're all gone now, but the package says the antibiotic can keep working for up to ten days. So I figure I've got several more thrill rides from the Sandman in my subconscious future.

We'll only concentrate on the main dream that has stuck with me. Not the one from early this morning in which Hick took me to a casino that was a converted library. Seriously. Everybody had to be quiet, the games had no sound, and I was gambling on a microfiche machine. I did not win.

My standout dream was about my grandma, my dad's mother, who passed away two years ago. In this dream, I went to her house to pick up The Pony, who had spent the night. Grandma was puttering around in her muu-muu, happy as a clam. Her dream house, like her real house, was wall-to-wall books. Floor to ceiling. Every room. My mom had dropped in, and I followed her to the library. How I knew it was the library, with EVERY room being full of books, I don't know. But in my dream world I knew it was the library.

As mom walked by a set of four black-leather-bound hardbacks with no titles showing, a small black leather pouch popped out and onto the floor. Kind of like when a young Corey Feldman accidentally spilled a jar of paintbrush water on Gizmo in Gremlins, and balls of fur began popping out of his back. Gizmo's back. Not Corey's.

"Hey, what's that?" I called to dream Mom.

"How should I know?" she replied brusquely over her shoulder. So totally unlike her. I picked up the item. It had a zipper on one side. I opened it to find a rolled up note, like a tiny scroll with no wooden top and bottom thingies. And do you know what the scroll said? No, it was not like in A Christmas Story when Ralphie decoded the secret message to find out it was all one big commercial: Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

The very special dream scroll said: Wizards must maintain proper weight.

Ahem. It's okay, Grandma. I realize I'm not svelte. Of course, when I called my mom to relate this dream to her, I made sure to say, "No offense, Mom. But I'm sure the scroll was directed at you. It popped out right after you walked by, you know." Mom did not take offense.

From there, the dream led me back to Grandma, in the kitchen. She pulled a neither new nor old penny from the folds of her muu-muu, and handed it to me. It was bent in the middle, vertically, but not too much. I could tell that this was her prized possession, and that she was never without it. "See it there?" dream Grandma asked. "That's Walter. He buys all our tickets."

It was the profile of a man on the back of the penny where the Lincoln Memorial belonged. And in the upper right corner of that round penny was a set of numbers. They changed like when you tilt one of those faceted things that shows a different picture depending on the angle. I pointed it out to Grandma, who had no idea those numbers changed.

Now I need to find out who Walter is. And what kind of tickets he was buying. My mom says she only knows of one Walter, who was in a rock club with Grandma.

Maybe I don't want to know more.