Shine is on vacation. Here’s a rerun.

I’ll let you be in my dreams
if you let me be in yours.
— Bob Dylan

8:13 a.m.: Wake up from dream about trying to park my car. In the dream, I’m in Rio de Janeiro and go to pull into the lot, but the parking attendant tells me, “No, you can’t park your car here.” I ask, Why? And he says, “Because you’re not a tourist.” But I know damn well I’m a tourist. I’m in Rio. But he keeps it up. “No, no. You not tourist. This parking lot only for tourists.” And he knows he’s messing with me. He has this little smirk on his face, and there is absolutely no reasoning with him.
8:14:12 a.m.: That’s what I hate about dreams now. Everybody in them knows they can get away with anything. You can’t reason with them because it’s like, “Really, and what are you going to do if I don’t do what you say, wake up?” To them, dreams are like the last wild frontier, and they’re taking full advantage.
8:15 a.m.: With the parking lot guy, I told him I wanted to speak to his supervisor, and, well, did you ever try to get a supervisor in a dream? Good luck.
8:16 a.m.: I’ve been in dreams in, like, a convenience store, and a guy in line will start feeling up the woman in front of him just because he can. I don’t play that way. In my dreams, I live by the same code I do in my waking life: no stealing, no cutting in line, no feeling up the ladies at the convenience store — unless they want me to. I can be in the middle of some feverish dream being chased by Super Mario and Bam Margera, but if I accidentally back into a parked car at Target while on the run, I leave my name and number. That’s just who I am.
8:17 a.m.: I’m not saying I want the job because I’m sure it would be very complicated and a big responsibility, but we need to bring some law and order into the mix and … I guess what I’m trying to say is: Dreams need a sheriff.
8:17:23 a.m.: Go back to sleep.
9:38 a.m.: While eating a big bowl of Apple Jacks for breakfast, I keep asking myself the one question that’s been gnawing at me for weeks now: Is it too late for me to be a Mia Hamm fan?
10:12 a.m.: Pulling into the parking lot at work, I see a young couple in the courtyard of the luxury apartments I’ve always wanted to live in next to our building. My car window is down, and all I can hear as I pass is the guy’s voice cracking as he says, “You killed my heart. I am done with you.”
10:13 a.m.: I like the simplicity of that — the cut-and-dried-ness of that. It stirs me deeply, and I feel for them in a way that makes me immediately think SOMEBODY NEEDS A ROOMMATE!
10:17 a.m.: In my office building, two women — one young, one old — are standing to the side of the elevator. It appears to be one of those mentoring situations, and the older woman keeps sternly saying, “Don’t ever let anybody tell you that you can’t do something. You can do anything you want.”
10:18 a.m.: Now, I’m no mentor. In fact, I was kicked out of the mentoring program, and I wasn’t even the mentor, I was whatever they call the person who signs on to be mentored. But one afternoon, my mentor, this guy who looked like John Lithgow, took me down and dropped me off at Human Resources as if it were the Animal Rescue League. I hung around for a few days to see if I’d get picked again, then figured I better get out of there before I got put to sleep.
10:18:13 a.m.: Anyway, I just don’t think that’s good advice — to make people believe they’re capable of doing anything they want. It sounds like something somebody in my dreams would come up with. I could think of 100 examples of why it’s bad advice.
10:19 a.m.: Example 1: Would you want me to give you a haircut?
10:19:31 a.m.: Example 2: Didn’t you think “JFK Jr.” the instant you heard Brad Pitt is going for his pilot’s license?
10:31 a.m.: Argument breaks out over whether there’s any difference between clothes you wouldn’t wear anywhere else but around the house and clothes you’d wear to Blockbuster. “There is a difference,” the boss finally says, “but it’s oh-so-subtle.”
10:54 a.m.: Try to finish a writing assignment, but every time I stop to think, this cartoonish paper clip pops up on my screen and starts scratching his head. He has eyes and eyebrows, and if he could talk, I bet he’d sound exactly like Gilbert Gottfried. But right now, he just keeps scratching his head like, “That’s it? That’s all you got?”
10:55 a.m.: Punch paper clip.
11:09 a.m.: Not sure whether it’s just to get out my aggression over the paper clip or not, but decide to be straight with the people I work with once and for all, just tell them right out what I think of them.
11:38 a.m.: Finish writing up on index cards exactly what I want to say, and then set out to recite them at each desk.
11:40 a.m.: Stop No. 1: Excuse me, I say (I always say excuse me; it’s one of my standards) I don’t like you. You’re stingy with a compliment, and you reek of dollar-store hairspray.
11:42 a.m.: Stop No. 2: Excuse me, but I thought you quit this job. You’re always saying you’re going to quit, but you never freaking quit. So quit already.
11:43 a.m.: I’m waiting.
11:45 a.m.: Stop No. 3: Excuse me. You killed my heart. I am done with you.
11:45:17 a.m.: Stop No. 4: Excuse me, but I never forgot the day you turned on me. It completely negated the niceness with which you’d showered me for three years. For some reason, your previous kindness made it even worse.
11:46 a.m.: Stop No. 5: Excuse me. I just need you to tone it down. We know you have more money than the rest of us and it shouldn’t really bother me — and most of the time it doesn’t — but once in a while, usually on a Thursday, when I’m sitting there planning my third in-state vacation to, say, Universal Studios for the eighth time and hear you on the phone complaining to someone about how watered down the drinks were in Fiji, it’s a little irritating. Just tone it down. That’s all.
11:46:40 a.m.: Stop No. 6: Excuse me, you smell funny.
11:47 a.m.: Get to No. 7, but the desk is empty and half the office is heading to the storage closet for index cards.
11:47:14 a.m.: And the other half already has the cards and is lining up at my desk.
11:48 a.m.: Decide to take an early lunch.
12:12 p.m.: Read that Burger King’s triple burger is no match for Wendy’s triple burger, but I’m always for the underdog, even when it comes to food.
12:43 p.m.: Try to take nap in car in Burger King parking lot.
12:47 p.m.: Fall asleep.
12:47:17 p.m.: There’s a new sheriff in town.

Contact T.M. Shine at tshine@citylinkmagazine.com.