Once an Iowan, Always an Iowan

Riding the bus during off-peak hours is always interesting. I wasn’t getting much done this afternoon in my study carrel, so I decided to go home, work out, and then get back to work.

Here are some people I observed on the bus:

• Couple of indeterminate age. The guy seemed 24-28ish, but the woman seemed 35-40ish. They were alternately sipping out of this gigantic plastic travel mug that read “COFFEE POT TO GO!! Home — Office — Meetings.” Seriously, it was way bigger than your standard coffee pot.

• Twenty-five eight-year-olds, apparently returning to school from some downtown field trip. The bus was already pretty full when they got on, and they were universally excited that they got to stand up for the ride. One girl, whose name I gathered was Rosa, squealed with glee each time the bus accelerated or decelerated as her purposefully limp body was cast to and fro. Incidentally, the to-ing and fro-ing was into and away from my shins. A few minutes into her trip, Rosa told her friends, “I wish they would make a ride that was like riding a bus. [giggle giggle.] But you wouldn’t be able to hold on. [hee hee hee] And everything on the ride would be made of candy [giggle] , so when you ran into it you would get all sticky [giggling all around].“

• A partially blind woman chaperoning another woman who appeared to be (mildly) developmentally disabled, who was in turn carting around a sleeping two-year-old and a sleeping infant. This seemed (for all involved) like a level of difficulty I’m glad I don’t have to tackle every day. I was dying to know their story, where they were going, etc. But, like the couple with the coffee pot and unlike Rosa, they were very quiet and I couldn’t overhear anything.

I hardly ever dream. Or, probably more correctly, if I do dream, I hardly ever remember it. I would say that I’m aware of and able to remember a dream maybe once every 4-5 months. But last night I had this dream. It’s not particularly interesting, but I thought I’d share.

In the dream Will and I are in some starbucks-like place, and we’re ordering ice cream. Only it’s self-serve soft-serve, so you’re supposed to fill your cone and then go to the counter to pay. But we don’t pay, and instead we just walk out. (It is unclear to me whether this was accidental or part of some conscious plan to rip off starbucks.)

Once we’re out in the parking lot (which is a big outdoor-mall type parking lot), we begin walking casually to our car. But then Will begins to get nervous, looks wildly at me, and begins to run to the car. I tell him to stop running and just act cool. He doesn’t, so I start running too so that, since he’s now drawn attention to our crime, we can get away faster.

As we leap into the car, we see an aproned employee of the starbucks-like establishment comng around the corner, kind of curiously, seemingly just to take a look. But maybe to try to catch us.

As we drive away, I’m telling Will to just let me handle it if we get stopped. We’ll say we just forgot. Really sorry. Here’s some cash — we’ll pay right here.

Then I work up, and my heart was racing. It took me a while to get back to sleep.

Weird, huh? What do you think this means?