Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Weirdest Dream I Have Ever Had

Last night, I had a dream. (As I am wont to do while sleeping.) This dream was probably the strangest one I have ever had. It involves exotic foreign lands. It involves a nuclear accident. It involves an incredibly random assemblage of people from my life. It involves the Indianapolis Children's Choir. It shall henceforth be called the Israeli Nuclear Emergency Choir Concert Dream, and here it is in its entirety, for your reading pleasure.

It's a beautiful summer day on the beach in Jerusalem. [Ignore any geographical inconsistencies. It's a dream, people. Suspension of disbelief.] After a long day of seeing the sights, I'm lounging under a beach umbrella with my fellow travelers. My fellow travelers, of course, consist of two boys from my senior class, the girl who is the sister of one and girlfriend of the other [everyone from Logansport now knows who these three people are], an extremely random girl from the graduating class above me, someone's parents, a few other assorted people, and a baby. We're enjoying our time on this very crowded beach when suddenly, city-wide sirens begin to sound. An official-sounding voice comes over a PA system and informs us all that there has been a biological/nuclear emergency and that we must all immediately go inside. In a panic, we pack up our beach gear and join in the crowd of people rushing toward the few buildings that the government officials are ushering people into. As we are walking, the baby of the group, who is just old enough to walk on his own, attempts to make his daring escape. While it would, under some circumstances, be fun or entertaining to watch him try to run away (since, after all, we have no idea whom this baby actually belongs to), our status of being in the midst of a biological emergency incites me to snatch him up into my arms, and we continue along.

We are led up a flight of stairs and in a side door of a building just up the hill from the beach. We walk through the building, past lockers, classrooms, and a general layout that puts me in the mind of a Catholic high school built sometime in - and slowly falling apart since - the 70s. During our remarkably long walk through the building, we cross paths with the Notre Dame women's basketball team. For some reason that I cannot explain, there are at least thirty girls on the team, and, besides Skylar Diggins, who is wearing her customary #4, they are all rocking #23 jerseys. The girls and I exchange waves and hellos, since they all clearly know that I go to Notre Dame, and this kinship bond brings us together in this time of nuclear emergency. At long last, we arrive at our destination within this school-bunker-building. In a move that somehow surprises no one, the room we enter is a near-perfect replica of the basketball arena of the JACC. The seats and ND logos printed around the place are spot-on. In fact, the place looks pretty much exactly how one would expect the JACC to look, were it transplanted into a dirty old high school in Jerusalem and also sliced in half. My travel crew sits down more or less together, because if any occasion didn't call for a group sticking together, it's a nuclear emergency.

 More people file in, and two things become evident. The first is that you are only allowed to hide out in this particular JACC-bunker if you have some connection with Notre Dame or, more generally, the state of Indiana. The second is that there are an abnormally huge number of people vacationing in Israel on this fine summer's day who have a connection with Indiana. Once everyone is seated, a man who apparently is the official emergency control man for this JACC-bunker heads down to the court to give everyone a short pep talk and generally keep us entertained. I look around and notice that the touring group of my parents' own Logansport Children's Choir would appear to be seated to my immediate right. Upon further investigation, I discover that it is actually the Indianapolis Children's Choir; they are just wearing pirated LCC uniforms, from which they have ripped out the "Logansport" embroidery and sewn in "Indianapolis." Apparently, in this strange alternate universe where I vacation in nuclear-war-torn Israel, choir-on-choir uniform violence is a thing. To our left is the entire directorial staff of the ICC, none of whom will acknowledge my presence, despite the fact that they definitely all know me. [Note: this actually happens in real life when I see them, too.] Behind them sits a small group of friends headed up by a young Alan Cumming. As we chat with them, it comes to light that young Alan Cumming is a close personal friend of our high school French teacher - a completely logical fact over which we immediately bond. Our emergency-control leader man continues telling jokes on the microphone. Young Alan Cumming continues telling us stories about our French teacher. The ICC kids, you know, probably sing or something.

While all of this is going on, I look out the wall of windows immediately beyond the court. Outside, the scene looks something like an excerpt from a bad apocalypse type movie. Cops and haz-mat suit guys are running around looking unproductive. I notice that the pools visible outside our building - of which there are around seven, for some inexplicable reason - still each contain ten or so "children." Because this is something I would think of in real life, I immediately realize that these "children" are actually robots planted in the pools to make it look like people are having fun. "Ohhhh," I think to myself, "Of course!"

At some point after all of this happens, an Inception-style transition occurs, and I am briefly in a magically clean, glittery New York City with two very random Folk Choir people. Where this fits into the rest of the story, I do not know, because in the blink of a metaphorical dream-eye, I am back in Israel. This time, the JACC-bunker has been converted to a concert hall. We have found a side entrance to the JACC-bunker and converted it to a mini-museum. A museum for what, you ask? The history of the Logansport (really Logansport this time) Children's Choir, of course! Because, in perhaps the most logical move of the whole ordeal, we have decided to hold the LCC 25th anniversary concert there. In Jerusalem. So I escort my grandmother - who, though she needs assistance to walk through a museum, has made the flight all the way to Israel for an hour-long concert - through the museum exhibit and into the JACC. I take my seat in the auditorium and watch the beginning of the proceedings. The auditorium is completely full, entirely of people from Logansport. While most of the people involved in the concert are wearing their LCC uniforms or are otherwise dressed formally, one of the emcees is dressed in a sexy witch Halloween costume. As far as I know, the nuclear threat is still ongoing and real, we've just chosen to survive it by staying inside and holding a choir concert.

Then, at the end of the dream, I meet a hot, rich Jewish supermodel who falls so deeply in love with me that he agrees to convert to Catholicism, and we live happily ever after.

Just kidding about that last part.

The end.

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