Don't Overcook Your Pancakes!

I haven't really been remembering my dreams lately, which is odd because I normally have such long, vivid, movie-like dreams I remember in great detail. I actually can't recall a real in-depth ,strange dream I've had in over a month.

The last one was right before the wedding. It was the return of my fighting-zombies dreams. I hadn't had one of those zombie/vampire dreams in about a year. I even used my trademark wooden bat to fight them off--just like in my old fighting dreams. It was great.

But last night's dream topped it. Here's the gist: The wife and I were back in Europe with a group of teens. It was my Dad's birthday, so I decided to treat him to pancakes. I went to this little kitchen in the hotel lobby and started making these simply perfect pancakes on a griddle.

I had one pancake left when my wife and a teen girl came over. They needed help with a vending machine. I went with them to check it out. After we got it working, I saw there were baseball cards inside the vending machine. Ooh, I thought, Baseball cards! I started to count out money to get some. ..

That's when I remembered, "My Pancake!"

When I got back to the griddle, I found that I'd left the pancake on too long and, OF COURSE, it turned into a baby. When I saw this, it was if it made perfect logical sense: If you burn a pancake, it turns into a person. I grabbed the little boy off the griddle and he had toasted buns.Literary. And so I scrubbed the black toasted stuff off his bum. When I was done, he'd aged to be a 3-year-old Italian kid with black curly hair. He said it was time for his birthday party.

Again, I got distracted because a teen girl had wandered off by herself. And she left the hotel. Now, I'm not a very good chaperon in my dreams apparently. Before I caught up with her to bring her back to the hotel, I got distracted again by a band playing in a little restaurant. There was a boy playing tympani, two girls on horns and their mom playing a purple hippo squeeze toy.

I eventually got bored and left again to go sight-seeing. I saw Holyrood Palace and the Tower of London. Then, my wife picked me up in a white van and told me she wanted to show me her favorite thing in Europe. We drove over London's Tower Bridge (and saw a second one in the distance) and then onto a Pier. Off to the right was the Eiffel Tower. "There," she said, "Is my favorite sight." It was a submarine in a lagoon right in front of the Eiffel Tower. I was impressed.