11/25/97

There was a nation-wide computer programming contest and it was being held in the Calvert Elementary Library in Auburn Nebraska. I was part of the Lincoln Nebraska team. We got there early. As the teams came into the room, their hometown was announced, or homeschool, whichever applied. When the Florida State team came in, they sat down at a card table near where I was sitting, and I thought "Hey, that one girl looks like Sarah!" Sarah is a girl I know over the internet who goes to Florida State. But then I thought "Wait, I don't know what Sarah looks like," which is true. Still, I was thoroughly convinced that it was her. I was wearing a NEAL-LINCOLN nametag, so I thought surely she would recognize me and say something. She didn't though. Later on (in the dream) she emailed me and said that she saw me at the contest, but had no answer when I asked why she didn't say hi. Oh well.

My parents came to the contest and drove me to Grandpa and Grandma Obermeyer's house afterwards. I watched the news and was surprised to see a video from 1986 of me going down a slide and my mom catching me. I spun around and asked Dad what this was about, and he said "Oh they're just still talking about Al Gore's death. Supposedly he's been dead for 11 years but no one was willing to admit it, and now Clinton's in trouble." I thought that was a bit odd, but if there was anyone who could get away with or even try to get away with having a dead vice president for 5 years, it'd be Bill Clinton. I heard a racket coming from the garage, so I told Grandma I'd go check it out.

Looking out the garage door, I could see Batman driving up and down the street (we were now in town), jumping the curb and running over mailboxes. A pliceman was parked in the garage, and I asked him what seemed to be the problem. He told me that Batman had gone berserk, and that they were calling in top professionals to take care of the problem. Right now they had The Joker and Danny DeVito, and were waiting on someone else. I told them that I could help--I was an expert on Batman mythology (I don't know what I meant by "Batman Mythology" but that's what I told them). They thought that was good enough, so they gave me a huge machine gun that was not unlike the one that Arnold the Good Terminator used to shoot at a helicopter or something in Terminator 2. It was carried low with a strap around my shoulder and it was powerful. I walked out into the driveway and started shooting up this house. Brian McConnell ran up to me and said "Neal! That's my grandpa's house! Batman is over there!" I felt bad as soon as he said that, as the house was full of holes and the paint job was quite dreadful, but a VTOL plane started rising from behind the house, and assuming that was the target, I unloaded on that. After filling it with holes and dropping it back to the yard, Brian yelled "Neal! That's the neighbor!"

I went back into the house as I had to get dressed for the Student Council Alumni convention. I grabbed my green Adidas soccer shorts and took off. Mr. Quint, the guidance counselor at Auburn high school up until 1996, decorated this large room with blown up black-and-white photos of the various student councils from each year. There was a large cardboard display for each of the last 10 years, featuring 4 photos each--one photo for each class. I remember going over to the 1992-1993 display and looking at the Freshman S.A.B. Reps--Me, Molly, and Josh (this is inaccurate, as Josh was not elected til 1994 and should be replaced by Danny, but I'm relaying it as the dream told it). The picture was so funny, because we were all giving this three-fingered gesture, which meant nothing to me at the time I saw it, but I remembered that when we were being photographed, it had some sinister meaning that freshmen would find funny. It was a sad event, really, because everywhere you could see pictures of more innocent times, when everyone was so much, if nothing else, younger. And judging from thsoe pictures of me, I was far happier. I had honest smiles, not the fake ones you give to the guy who only has one hand. These were real.

I went outside and sat on the curb in the rain. Molly walked by and said hello, not recognizing me.

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