Kindergarten Cop

I am walking down a street in a gated community in Florida. There are tidy little bungalows with manicured lawns on either side of the street. I meet a friend and past colleague, a retired police officer. We stop and chat. He tells me he has something to show me, evidence from a case he was working on years ago when he was still on the force. I ask him why he still has evidence in his possession, he says the case was unsolved and he still works on it in his spare time.

He says it’s nearby. I walk with him through the streets of the community. I notice another former colleague at the front door of one of the bungalows. He looks like he is returning from playing tennis. We wave and keep walking. The street turns into a high school running track. The surface is red clay. I turn to my friend and tell him he’s moving well for his age, he’s probably up for a jog. He gives me a swat for being impudent, but we start jogging. I looks down and notice we both have bare feet, a moment longer and there is a thin layer of snow on the track. We continue running in bare feet, our footprints leave a striking trail of red against the white snow.

We arrive at a storage locker. My friend pulls a key from his pocket and opens the padlock. He rolls the door up, and a huge pile of toys appears. He starts sifting through the toys, muttering to himself, looking for something specific. I ask him if he used to be the Kindergarten Cop, or what? He glares at me, tells me this is important evidence, and disappears into the pile of toys.

I wake up.

Confusing Department Stores and Ineffective Drug Busts

I’m shopping for a mattress. I’m in a poorly lit, crowded area of a department store that has a stock of mattresses. I’m looking for a particular mattress called “Olivia”. As I walk through the cluttered aisles, I’m reluctant to look too closely at any of the mattresses, as they seem dingy and dirty. I finally see one the looks crisp and new, it’s even set up on a boxspring. I sit on the edge of the mattress to test wether it is firm or soft, and am surprised to sink down several inches. The boxspring is actually a waterbed, and the mattress is floating on top. I continue on, noticing now that all the mattresses are branded “Olivia”, and that any that are set up for display are floating on a water mattress, making assessment of the firmness of the mattress impossible.

I leave the area to find some assistance and come across an assortment of people, some I know and some I don’t. I tell them I’m looking for an “Olivia” mattress, and they tell me to follow them, they know just where they are.

We return to the same area of the store, it is filled with racks of high waisted jeans and skirts. I look at one rack and see that they are in fact “Olivia” jeans. It is now lighter in the store, and I can see that one wall is large windows to the outside. The store is on a residential street, there are large suburban houses with wide driveways directly across the street.

I decide I’m in the wrong place, and once again leave to find a mattress. After walking around for a short while, I return to the area and the mattresses are back. I still can’t find a sales person, and the mattresses are still irritatingly difficult to assess. I again leave the area and encounter a crowd of shoppers, who again lead me back to the same area, now filled with jeans.

As I am inspecting a gaudy high-waisted pink and grey skirt with another shopper, our attention is drawn to a commotion outside the window, across the street in one of the driveways. There is a large truck in the driveway, doors open, with two men in the truck. Police, a lot of police have surrounded the truck, at least 30 of them all dressed in black SWAT style uniforms, complete with helmets. As we watch, the police look all over and under the truck, before moving to the cab and pulling the men out, one from each side.

They haul the men around to the back of the truck, where we can see them both. The man from the drivers side has something in his fist, which, despite the incredible number of police, is not restrained. He throws it toward the other man, who is also not adequately restrained. The second man grabs the round package, about the size of a  baseball, off the driveway and stuffs it in his mouth.

Inside the store, the shoppers are pointing and commenting on the ineffectiveness of the takedown, “He’s just put the evidence in his mouth!”, and “There’s still time, you idiots, it’s too big for him to swallow!”. The second man is almost comically trying to chew and swallow whatever he put in his mouth.

I wake up.