A Daymare with Soul

Daymares are far worse than nightmares. They're adultoid terrors, no monsters but overly complex and exhausting. More than once I've been "dream-tricked" into working old, hated jobs at big box stores, jobs I hated myself for staying because they were easy. The other feature of daymares is they're ultrarealistic in their banality; I'd dream-check my sail foam for the latest Hot Stack Newz only to open my eyes and see the phone just sitting there untouched, like my heart.

The last daymare added something new at least, I visited a medical facility with over 100 "patients" playing slot machines and doing other gamblings. In the middle of the crowd I found a ping pong table and seated on the other side was conservative columnist and author Thomas Sowell.

"You too?" I asked, dumbfounded. I meant he had my condition, the only reason for anyone being there besides the medicos, slots and now this...table.

"Hi Mr. Sowell, I've read some of your books," which was true, before I’d been the hope-filled “colorblind" fool who believed if just enough blacks would "suddenly" value education and take things seriously they'd recover, learning that Democrats are the REAL racists! We could then live as one colorblind people, shitting non-gay rainbows. What do you want, I was a 27-year old not-sex-having dork who believed stupid shit, unlike now, 25 years later.

I stood while Thomas Sowell sat and we played ping pong, surrounded by the hundred(s) gambling and medical-ing. The ping pong ball looked like it was made of clear crystal but bounced like a normal plastic ball, making it damned near impossible to see. Sowell smoked me on the back-and-forth at least twice. I went to serve the ball by scraping it onto my paddle and it disintegrated into mush. "The ball," I said. Thomas said triumphantly, "That's because it's a strawberry," and it was! A mangled strawberry on the table where the ball had been.

It was time to go so I offered Thomas Sowell a ride. Though it was a dreamworld I still had the same SUV tank as in real life. Before Thomas Sowell could reach the passenger side he was accosted by a few fans, including a black middle-class couple with a toddler. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes in my dreams I recognize they're dreams. THIS WAS ONE OF THOSE TIMES.  

I stretched my hand and used The Force, lifting the couple's toddler high into the sky. I felt sad because his parents didn't even notice, but then they were engrossed in the moment with celebrity Thomas Sowell. (No I didn't drop the kid, I set him down just as gently. Unlike real children he made no sound.)

Thomas Sowell got in the tank's passenger side. IRL he is "extra-hated" by leftoid intellectuals not only for being a black conservative but because he started out a Marxist.

The rest was kind of a blur. Thomas Sowell said acquaintance-level pleasantries but dropped no science, useful advice or lottery numbers. He did not turn to me and say, with deadly seriousness in his deep fluid baritone, "Ben. Find The Golden Key. It's the key to everything."

I dropped him off somewhere and snapped awake.   I know why Thomas Sowell was in the daymare, for we'd just had some memes on The Stack wishing Thomas Sowell a Happy 95th Birthday. Until I saw the pics I didn't know he was married to an equally-elderly White woman. Good for him.

I've maintained for decades that full-time employees anywhere should be given one extra day of "Dream Pay" per year, for having work dreams. It's only fair.