Did you ever have a dream where you know that you're in a dream. Not bad at first. I'm working with Jack Nicholson who is my sales manager, who is a fighter for anything and everything. What a guy! (I had watched the movie "Hoffa" just before going to bed.")
Well, anyway, we're in NYC (why not Chicago?) and Jack Nicholson is the Sales Manager for my firm that makes, of all things, zippers. I'm a older guy in the dream, about 40 or 50, who really needs to keep the job so that I can stay in NYC. I didn't think about moving down South; you have to make a lot of money before you leave to go South and be really happy there. You have to make the money in NYC and you have to make it big - maybe a couple of million or more.
My attitude is a lot like like Danny De Vito's attitude in "Hoffa." I love Jack but I finally realized that we're both going to die today. My first assignment is to get the order from Levi Strauss and we think that we are the only ones who can fill it because we're the only ones with a zipper that expands to fit the woman - nobody, and I mean NOBODY, had a zipper like this. This is the zipper of all zippers.
To top it all off, Levi is going to sell a new line of jeans and tight skirts for ladies who are size 5+. (As well as 4+ and 6+ and all of the other pluses in the lineup.) If they are size 5, the jeans fit perfectly. Skin tight and vah-vah-voom! If the lady is size 5+ then the zipper, the tabs, etc. let out automatically so that they still think that they are wearing a size 5 and all of their friends see the tag (like the little red tag on Levi jeans) and believe that they are wearing a size 5. For some reason, nobody can figure out that Levi is lying and pulling the wool over their eyes because they don't WANT to believe it.
But, Levi is beating everyone over the head with a price from an Indian company out of Bombay that is making the stuff cheaper than we can make it or buy it - somehow I lost sight of the fact that we were the only ones who had this particular zipper. And the one from Bombay isn't even an expandable zipper but we aren't supposed to know that part. If we lose this order then we'll lose all of the Levi orders in the future with it and never get another Levi order. So we have to take it, lose our bazongas with it just to keep the line of business from Levi. And you HAVE to keep Levi happy
My snoring is in concert with the buses starting up from the busstop where I'm sitting at a wooden picnic table and wooden bench-style chairs that are cold. Everything is cold. Not snow-blowing cold but just miserable cold with wet rainy days and nights where it isn't raining but it either just rained or is about to rain.
I remember that I'm sitting at a cold, snowy bus stop drinking coffee and waiting for Jack to show up so I can explain it to him - lukewarm (not quite cold) coffee since you can't keep coffee hot in NYC on a March afternoon. Jack shows up and wants to know what happened. I tell him but he doesn't understand that Levi is using the Indian order to beat everyone over the head to get the price down. He wants my pistol (De Vito carried one in "Hoffa") to go inside and shoot somebody but I have to talk him out of that because I know that this will just mess everything up for everyone.
As I begin to wake up, and I know that I'm waking up, but I don't really care, I struggle to get out of the cover. Somehow I know I'm waking up and that this dream means something. I don't know what yet - but I'll figure it out later. So finally I wake up to a darkened room and the sound of a fan slightly blowing. The dream is still there, I'm still wanting the order, Jack is still sitting on the bench but I'm gone and I'll never get back to help him get the order. Strange... What was so important about that order? And why Levi and women's jeans. See? This is why I don't let Freud inside my head.
Now I have a migraine. Maybe that's what woke me up. I need some ice for the back of my neck (which is one of the treatments for migraines that I use) and I can't get out of the chair (which is where I was sleeping) because the sheet is caught up in the corners of the chair and my feet are all warped up in the bottom of the sheet.. Not only that, the back pack is too hot for my back and I know if I just let out a primal scream it will wake up everyone in the house and I'll get committed to the funny farm for old coots who dream strange things at night.
I really hate the business world - I think I'm going to join Jesse Owens (a far-distant-removed cousin from Sweetwater - not the Olympic star from 1938) and go on out west somewhere. Jesse is about 6 foot ten something and just kind of ambles through life. We'll just get the heck away from all of this stress. The ride out there will be half the fun and being there will be the other half. Maybe we'll just sit on the dock of the bay in San Francisco, play guitars, sing soft French ballads about full, moonlit nights, drink Dos XX and watch the sun go down in the Pacific ocean every night. One night, we'll join the Sun and go down with it. Vaya con Dios amigos.
Shalom
jco
Shalom
jco
