Harley the Wienerdog

August 4, 2005

Dear spammers: why not do something useful with your lives, hm?

I lived the end of the world last night. It was a tsunami, and I ran from it with Matt, my cousin Alexis, and a friend of hers. I'm not sure where we were, but it was a pretty standard costal city.

The experience started overlooking huge field from an elevated position, right along the coast. While I remembered walking along the field a while back, it has now become a sort of quarry for something buried along the coast, and I notice the recently-constructed fence that kept out the commoners. Someone mentions that a storm is coming in, and as we watch the distant end of the field, the water churns massively and prompts everyone to run in the opposite direction.

We end up in a vehicle that had been flooded but still runs, driving away from the action. A man in the road stops us and gives the advice to head to a mall in a perpendicular direction. Without any guidance to the contrary, we turn as he suggested. We stop at the guts of what looks like an old church, realizing that we are again near the coast.

We walk "inside" (really, more like "under the remains of the roof") and find a woman and man collecting old books to carry away from danger. I ask if there is a cellar somewhere in the building, thinking still that this is just a bad storm. "No" is the answer as something begins to rumble. As I look up, I see the stereotypical crest of a 100-foot wave bearing down on us. "HOLY CRAP!", pointing, glass flying, water pouring in the door; next thing I know it's mostly dry and I'm just outside the building.

Matt finds me and we begin to climb balconies on a high-rise hotel building to reach higher ground. We reach a balcony that is a few stories up and spot, on the ground with many other people, Alexis and her friend, who we contact by walkie-talkie (wow? not only do we have walkie-talkies, but they must be waterproof). The danger seems to have subsided and Matt heads off into the crowd to meet them, but I'm content to chat electronically (I suppose I'm a jerk). I notice that there are about 10 paper plates along the wall behind me, each containing a full plate of cold food, but I'm not at all interested. One of them is a funnel cake, one is fried chicken.

At this point, Leslie Myles walks by and mentions that she's never seen me drive anywhere but on I-75, alluding to the earlier exodus. There are always the strangest people from my life in my dreams. I wake up, realizing it's 9:05am and my pager, whose battery is low, failed to wake me at 8am. I have that dead battery to thank for my strange experience.