Dream 19 Aug 2011

More of the same last night.

I was in the Army again in Germany. I was with Recce Sqn and we had a SUE (small unit exchange) with the Irish Army. The base we went to was on the west coast and was pretty isolated. Most of the Irish Recce coy we were visiting was in Lahr on their part of the exchange. One of the units on base were the Irish Parachute Brigade..
Of course we swooped into this area with lots of $$ and partying on our mind. Hence we flooded the few local bars and romanced many of the local chicks. The Para guys didn't like this at all, but knew we were only there for a week, so attempted to just wait it out.

The second day I was there I actually went alone to the Para mess to have some beers. The older barmaid was very friendly and the Para guys I met were also friendly. It seems that this exchange had no scheduled events, so all we did was drink to the point of excess, sleep in, and then start all over. I continued to go to the Para mess as my first place for beers (breakfast). After a few days the Para guys were a little pissed off at us, but they majority of the guys I met in the Para mess were still friendly. The barmaid was always telling me to come back in the future and visit her birthplace; an island off the west coast. Apparently there was lots of historic sites to see, but the only thing that attracted me was the fact that there were more pubs per capital then anywhere else in Ireland.

The tension between us and the Paras was ratched up after a few of them were beat up in a bar fight at one of the local pubs. Of course the next night, they dished it out to us. Soon a major confrontation was coming to be.

I still went every day to the Para mess for breakfast (about 4 pints of Guinness). The guys that had become friends were still there, but others whom I didn't know showed up. They talked to their Para buddies and I could tell that they didn't like me being in their mess. I bought a round of Jameson's Irish whiskey for everyone, toasted them all, and then made a quick escape before any thing evil happened.

That afternoon, when tensions were coming to the boiling point, I sat in my truck and plotted out a route to the barmaid's island for a visit the next week. My truck was parked inside the local mall, and I soon got asked about it from my Recce Sqn comrades. Since I had no idea why/how my truck was there, I made up a story that I had it shipped here by train, because I was taking 2 weeks of holidays after the exchange. That seemed to satify them and I soon went about washing the truck. Unfortunately I was on the second floor of the mall, and all my waste water flowed into the pharmacy and I had to escape in a hurry. Luckily the mall had a big enough elevator to handle my little truck.. That was Thursday, and beyond a few fights between us and the Paras, it was quiet.

Friday morning came. Everyone knew in the community that there was going to be a big fight between us and the Paras that night. I went to the Para mess for breakfast and recieved a map and directions from the barmaid to get to her home island. A few of my Para drinking buddies were there and we drank beer and joked. But soon some other big dudes showed up and gave my the hairy eyeball. I finished my beer and left.

Afterwards I visited the Irish Recce unit's mess, where the majority of our Sqn were drinking at. There were a few others present, and I realized that some of the big tankers from our Regiment were sent up by train to bulk up our Sqn. We drank Guinness and Kilkenny, and had a steak and kidney pie before we left the mess on our way to a downtown bar to face the Paras.

As the bulk of us left the mess, I bent down to tie my shoelace, and then the other one,, and then when I was the last I strolled over to my truck and drove it about a km outside of town and went to sleep in my truck. So I started my holidays about 2 hours early, but hey, If I would have accompanied the gang on this assault, they would probably have to stumble over my knocked out corpse just to get to a Para. I'm sure that our Sqn could have handled the Paras in a fair fight, and the fact that we had some heavy callsigns attached to us, they didn't need me amongst the fray, collecting punches and swinging my fists of cotton candy fury...

Then I back in a high school scenario.

I have the usual female teacher that loves/hates me. And I have gathered that I hate/hate her. She has been on my case for ever, and I kinda recognize that she is giving me a hard time because at 45 years old, I may know more than the 16/17 years olds in my classes. There are also some of the folks I went to school with back in the day, but they don't merit the attention I get.

So I'm in the back of her classroom and try to follow along with what she is teaching. Now remember that I've taken all the classes she is teaching 30 years ago, but I have no clue what she is going on about. She brings equations and fractions and so forth to answer a simple question. She may as well be conversing in Klingon.

The next class I get their early and have time to sharpen my pencil. I spy a sharpener up by the chalk board. I go to it, but it doesn't have an opening to put a pencil into it. I think that this sharpener has a factory fault in it and some Joulio mounted it without testing. I head back to my desk. By the time I sit down, there is a young student sharpening her pencil with the sharpener. By the time I rush to the front to see how she is doing it, she has finished and heads back to her desk. Not to look like the fool, I grab a brush and commence to clean the blackboard of some faint chalk images.

Soon Beeazlebub enters and settle's in to her desk in the front of the class. She asks one of the front row students to collect last night's assignment. As he goes from desk to desk collecting papers, I quickly write down enough numbers and letters that it will fool this guy into thinking that I really have an assignment, as I know that the teacher won't look at them until later,,, probably midnight in the garden of good and evil; mostly evil..

So she begins today's class. It is some sort of thing about the public and polititians and whatever I wasn't listening to her. But she asks confirmatory questions and I answer every one directed to me with either "in what context that may be" and/or "can you use that in a sentence".

I soon realize that I'm looking like the fool. The teenagers are sniggling and texting each other about old man Chris being an idiot, and the older students are trying their best to count how many ceiling tiles there is in the classroom. I resolve to pay attention and jot down some notes.

So I start paying attention and make some notes.. Unfortunately I'm taking notes on bristle board with very large letters. I soon have a large stack of bristle boards beside my desk with about 37 words in total on them. Along about then my desk starts sliding to the back door. I manage to stop it and bring it back to the front of the class. As soon as I start taking notes again, it begins to move to the back door. Devil Spawn soon notices this and guides her laser eyes into the desk legs and welds them to the floor right in front of her desk.

I'm somewhat relieved, as my desk is not mobile, I'm in the front so have to pay attention, and I have lots of bristle board left for notes. In a few seconds my head starts to hit the desk because I'm dreadfully tired. I try to stay awake but am unable to. In between naps, I notice that the teacher has changed into some form of alien. I try to stay awake to combat her/it, but I'm so tired.

Luckily I switch to another dream.
I'm in a big truck with my Uncle Charlie and some dude that that hijacked us. This dude has some history with me, (father maybe), and is trying to cross the Confederation Bridge. But before then we drive around Charlottetown. I realize that I'm in a movie, and try to point out the landmarks I know. Because the town is so small, the movie crew often film the same street but going backwards and so forth. Finally the police catch up to us, and the dude is starting to panic. My uncle Charlie takes this oppurtunity to grab the dude's gun and try to convince that it is all over. The dude breaks down and hugs Charlie, Charlie groans and starts to spit blood, as the dude has stabbed him. The police soon corner us, and the dude get's out and points his gun at the police, and subsequently gets shot dead. I notice that his gun is only a starter's pistol and wonder at the madness of it all.


Again in the army I have a bunch of new troops that have no discipline at all, and show no respect for anyone. I have 3 months before we deploy to Afghanistan, so I'm pretty sure that I either have to get this motley crew together, or fire them and start anew. I also wonder why I'm back in the Army and also why the powers to be would let me go back to Afghanistan. Whatever, I try my best. The new guys are mostly men, but there are also some chicks.

We end up at my grandparent's place on Jordan Crescent. Of course the are gone, but my uncle Mickey still lives there. The new guys are giving me grief over everything, and all of my bluster and threats mean nothing to them. I eventually tell them all that they are fired and won't deploy to Afghanistan with us, and that seems to satisfy them greatily. They would rather stay in Petawawa and get paid well and get pregnant and not get in harm's way.

The grandparent's place has a curling rink in it's basement and I think that a game of curling would take all our minds off of everything. Along with my troops, there are also a bunch of kids around 10-14 years old. Unfortunately the ice in the rink is melting and there is no way we can get it to freeze in a day. The rebel troops call everyone a loser and turn their attention to their smartphones and such.

For some reason I find myself in my uncle Charlie's car with a load of kids. He has a big old car and we are on the way to somewhere. I realize I don't have my seat belt on and click up. Charlie doesn't have his on, and since the backseat has at least 6 kids, I realize that they don't either. Oh well, we are driving slow anyway, I try to comfort myself with. Then Charlie starts driving like he is in a Nascar Race. Burning rubber at every corner and fishtailing around corners. We go down town in Charlottetown and he parks out side the big hotel. He gets a blanket from the trunk and enters the hotel, telling us to stay put. So here I am with a bunch of kids. I decide to take them into the restaurant and get them a meal of nutricious junk food. Afterwards we head out to the car. The hotel staff start giving me grief for parking in a 10 minute zone. Then eventually the police come and I give in and drive the car about a half block away. Just then my patrol of coyotes come by doing some sort of training. The first one goes down a boat ramp and parks on a barge. I walk over to the second and notice that the driver doesn't have his headsets on so can't listen to the commander give him direction. What's more the coyote is straddling a guard rail next to the boat ramp. The driver starts to drive forward and all my yelling won't stop anything.. Just before the coyote clears the guardrail, it gets pushed over and lands on its roof on top of the other coyote.

I rush down to the coyotes and at the same time the Troop Officer pulls up in his coyote. He is a good and trusted friend. The coyote that fell has rolled over and is now on its wheels next to the other coyote. We climg up that coyote and discover the commander and gunner has been turned into paste. The driver has been injured and the surv op is ok. We check the other coyote and see the surv ops head is gone, but the rest of the crew alive. The living listen to everything we tell them and do what we tell them. I am sad that the only way we could turn these young dudes into soldiers was to experience death in a training accident before we even got to Afghanistan.

The rest of the dream time involved me coming and going between several different homes and appartements. I remember one that was a nice 2 bedroom, but the only thing that divided it from a similiar 2 bedroom apartement was a 6 foot high divider.

Needless to say, when I come back to reality at the end of these night and discover I'm in my little house in Gowan Brae, I breath a sigh of relief.