Blue Roan Goes Missing!

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NEW PROMPT:
Write a story or poem about the loss of your car. Something goes wrong, and it’s in the shop, or a thief takes it, or an accident destroys it, or . . . How do you deal with this? Can you find something good that comes out of the situation?
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I’ve had the same recurring dream ever since I bought my first car, a two-door Fiat sedan, back in 1974. Even though I’ve owned four more cars after her, it’s always the Fiat that goes missing.

In the dreams, I park my car without any problem and leave to do my errands. At times, Blue Roan, my name for the blue car, is in a covered parking lot. Other times, the parking space is outside in a large lot. Once in a while, I even park on a side street.

The most common version of the dream is with the multi-level, covered parking lot. Having forgotten what level Blue Roan is on, I head for the corner of the large, concrete-block building where there is always an elevator. I pass dozens of cars, and my heart stops for milliseconds each time I see a blue one, but none are my tiny treasure.

In my dreams, besides seeing in color, I’m also aware of my other senses. Inside the elevator, I can smell the sweat and rancid perfume other passengers have left behind. Every time I push one of the floor buttons, my finger comes away feeling sticky. I’d rather not know what tacky substance made it feel that way. In the case of public elevators, ignorance is definitely bliss. As I mention further on, I’ve had a fear of elevators for years and hope my missing car is only one flight up.

As the elevator rises, I get off at each level to search for the small, blue car. Stretching into the distance are row after row of cars, and I go up and down them with high hopes of finally finding my missing Blue Roan. Each floor, though, proves a disappointment, and I slowly make my way back again to the elevator. By the time I reach the top level, I’m in complete panic after not finding my way of getting home. Besides that, even in my dream I can feel the pain in my feet because of the high heels I’m wearing.

The parking lot version isn’t about the usual store lot, but always in front of my high school. The image of that old building is clear in my mind, but I’d like to share what it looks like to the rest of you reading this.

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I haven’t attended that school since 1959 and didn’t even know how to drive back then. My father had given me two lessons in his old Woody before I left home for good. He never dared give me a third since the first time I ran into the closed garage door. The second time I again failed to even leave our driveway since I quickly drove the station wagon straight into a large snow bank next to the garage.

I didn’t get my license until 1974, one week before buying the Fiat. It took me almost half an hour to get up a small hill behind the auto dealership’s parking lot and merge into heavy commute traffic in downtown Oakland, CA. You see, I had learned how to drive in a car with automatic shifting, and my brand new car was a stick shift. It’s been suggested these traumatic experiences are at the root of my missing car dreams.

Getting back to those dreams, the space that slanted from the high school down to the main street managed to hide my Fiat. For some reason, it was always dark in this particular dream and filled with large automobiles from the 1950s, so it made sense I couldn’t see Blue Roan.

The last type of dream is the most recent, having only started a couple decades ago. I’m in a city that’s both familiar and unfamiliar. My city dream is another recurrent one I have along with two others, water and empty house dreams. Those, though, are stories for another day. I’ve often wondered what each dream means, but never dared have them analyzed for fear of what they’d say about me.

In the past I’d also had scary elevator crash dreams, but figured that one out when I watched the final scene in the original Willy Wonka movie. Seeing his glass elevator safely going through the chocolate factory’s roof stopped my dreams of an elevator zooming upwards round and round in a spiral and then crashing back to the ground.

Anyway, let’s return to the missing car in the street dream. At first I go directly to the spot where I absolutely positively remember leaving the car. There instead is a big, empty space where once a tiny, blue car waited patiently for me to return. In this dream, I repeatedly go up and down the length of the long street thinking I might have made a mistake about where I’d parked.

Usually at the point in the dream of not finding my car anyplace, I wake up and hurry to the window of my home to make sure my current car is in the driveway. Yes, Blue Satyr is safely parked under the persimmon tree. My car is not missing!

Dear reader, do any of your dreams sound like the ones above? Please share since, to quote the National Inquirer, “Inquiring minds want to know.”

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Microsoft Word count = 806

"The Writer's Cramp"  daily entry for 07/22/12
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