I don’t remember the joke, but it triggered the effect again. My black friend wasn’t black anymore; he was a machine and his face changed into a sort of digital display inside of which numbers and digits buzzed and whirred far too fast to read. I could tell he wasn’t pleased.
“Do you see me laughing?”
The face of my other black friend appeared above me. (Apparently I had precisely two of them in this story.) He seemed to be leaning over the wall I was sitting against, and he was smiling. The smile seemed to suggest that we were still friends, but that he too wasn’t pleased with my last comment.
I gave a weak smile, ‘no.’
“Maybe that’s because it wasn’t funny.”
“I know,” I stammered and cringed; “I don’t mean to be a jack-ass; it’s just that I can say that sort of thing with my indigenous friends and they laugh about it.”
“Well, we don’t think it’s funny.”
I told him I understood. I said I was sorry and that I will try to be more sensitive about things in the future.
The face above me looked across the street at our companion; “Have you explained that to him?”
“No, he turns into a magic parking meter whenever I attempt ethnic humor. I’ll apologize and discuss it with him when he changes back in a minute or two.”
“That sounds like a plan.”
***
Okay, those are pretty much the final moments of my dream this morning.
northierthanthou 
That was funny dream cheese you ate last night.
Steak and spicy potatoes. Most of the dream was about a failed business venture, travel, and what to do about another friend of mine. How this took an ethnic twist at the end is beyond me.
True, you probably don’t. Entertaining dream, though. Wish I could remember mine.
Usually I don’t these days; I think that’s one reason I wanted to write this one down.
(For those wondering about the first part of Poet’s post, I just changed the title. It was originally posted under the heading; “I Probably Don’t Want to Know Where this Came From.” I think the new title works a little better, but I’m really not sure I want to know where this came from.)
Lovely little segment!
Nice change of pace… good to mix things up a bit.
Weird dreams lol
I have nominated you for the One Lovely Blog Award
http://kattermonran.com/2012/08/26/my-ears-are-for-awards-coming-out-of
Thank you Mondrake. You are very kind.
And- lesbians talking of “trannies” is less queasy than straight folks talking of trannies, but still queasy. Actually your dream seems normal to me- face turns to a machine, that fits.
That’s what interested me about the dream. The image matched my sense of what happens in a conversation post faux pas. So often the insulted party just becomes inscrutable for awhile.
I’ve long since tried to stop understanding my dreams. 🙂
I’ve been away a week or so but wanted to come by and thank you for your recent visit.
You have a nice blog!
I’m reminded of a dream I had in my 20s, when I worked for an engineering firm, making sure the supply chain had all the bits it needed. The dream was just about bog-standard everyday life, no surrealism or weird stuff, except for one thing. Everyone and every social interaction had a part number, which I knew about but I wasn’t sure the other people did. It was a glimpse into the mechanistic working of a world I’d thought was alive.
That was genuinely scary.
Now that sounds like a cool dream.
hehe, nice post and a funny dream. Never thought about posting about my dreams… thx for the cool idea 😉 nice blog btw
Those dreams tend to stick in the mind all day, don’t they?
It’s awesome you even remember!!!!!!!
A Parking Meter, huh….
What would Freud say??? lol
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