I had another dream. This one was action packed. And it took place in Barrie, of all places. If you went to high school with me, hopefully you can perfectly visualize parts of this dream the way I did. If you didn’t go to Barrie Central Collegiate (Institute, if we’re being very official), let me try to describe it for you. From the back, the building is very (appropriately) institutional looking, concrete, with metal doors and a metal lining in the windows. To the right is the sports field, but it’s not very green; the football and rugby players effectively tore up any grass that ever tried to grow there, leaving a permanently muddy terrain. This is entirely encased in a tall, gray, chain-link fence. To the left is the local ice rink, where the minor league hockey team used to play before the bigger, fancier arena opened in the south end of town. After that the rink (called the Dunlop Arena) was mostly used for skating field trips and the one weekend a year when the Circus came to town. Now, imagine an alley way about the width of a large car, if you stood at the end of this alley flanked on either side by the field and the arena, you would just be able to see the back of Central (from this view the arena covered most of the school). If you kept walking backwards you would be in the arena parking lot; if you kept walking backwards to the edge of lot, at the street, this is where the view from my dream took place. Imagine everything I just told you, except replace Barrie Central Collegiate, with an Olympic Stadium. This is my dream.

A group of friends and I were about to see a movie, but I decided I wanted a cup of water before it started. I got into the elevator, because the cinema was at the very top of the building, and Jen and Tamara Redwood got into the elevator with me, along with their mum.

The elevator started to descend, but the door hadn’t closed all the way. There was about a 4 inch gap on the right side of the elevator. Suddenly, someone pushed the door open more, and squeezed into the elevator (all while we were still moving). She was a French journalist covering the Olympics. The door stayed open while we descended. The girls jokingly pretended to get pulled to the edge of the elevator. Then, feeling unsettled by the ride, we all huddled together in the back corner furthest from the doors, until we actually did get pulled to the edge. Violently, we got sucked out the door, like a vacuum.

We got pulled out of the elevator but we didn’t plummet down an elevator shaft like we thought we would. No, we were on ground level, and beyond the opening, we were no longer indoors. Outside of the elevator was a train yard, with dozens of track rails. Even after leaving the elevator we were still being pulled across the yard and over the tracks, narrowly avoiding being hit by speeding trains.

Then, suddenly and without warning, we were walking back towards the movie theatre, which was no the Olympic Stadium.  For some reason we were walking from the opposite direction, as if the elevator we took from within the Stadium was now actually somewhere else. Regardless, we had a clear view of the Stadium but it was still several blocks away. We were walking through parking lots and between buildings to get there. To our left was the Dunlop Arena, and straight ahead, behind a chain link fence, was the stadium, in place of where the high school usually stood.

We heard coverage of the tragic death of the French journalist. Apparently not everyone avoided the trains. The press was calling her a hero.  But she put us in danger. We wanted people to know that she opened the doors of a moving elevator; she forced her way on; she was the reason the doors didn’t close again. She almost killed us all and now everyone thought she was a hero. We were mad.

I woke up before any conclusions could be drawn – this seems to happen a lot. I never used to be able to finish essays, either. Conclusions have never been easy for me. I think my dreams mock this.