Tornadoes and Memoirs

MORNING OF JUNE 5, 2011

This is the first of two dreams from this night. Due to the length of each, I've made them into two separate entries.

Another dream in which the cousin that I was very close to growing up was hanging out with me as though we were both kids again (not that I could really see myself to say for sure what age I was in the dream). He was spending the night at my house and we were upstairs getting ready for bed. We had the TV tuned to the local weather where they were showing a system of strong storms moving towards the area.

The storms were only supposed to be mildly severe with no expected tornadoes, but we decided to stay awake until they passed over us. Then I remember we went downstairs to where my parents were (being that we were both younger in the dream I naturally still lived at home) and watched the weather reports with them. Now they were showing tornadoes everywhere--not just in our state, but all over the country. One had even touched down in Washington D.C.

As we waited out the storms I realized there were many, many people downstairs with my parents, more or less like some kind of party. There were two long tables where men and women all sat with loads of paper and notepads all around them, studiously writing.

My dad explained to me that the people writing at the tables were transcribing all his notes from his entire lifetime. He was going to use the transcript to write his memoirs. He told me that in the morning, I was going to have to transcribe all day as well. There went my Sunday plans, I thought.

Then I turned back to the TV where the local weatherman was still warning about the tornadoes. The meteorologist was very, very manic and crazy--not from panic about the weather, but just his natural personality. At one point he began mocking a real-life local meteorologist, James Spann, who is widely hailed and respected around here. The crazy guy said something like, "Of course he's so accurate! He has all kind of equipment! Look what we have to work with! Cameraman! Go show them what we have to work with!"

The camera then walked through what looked like not a television studio, but a regular house. It opened the front door and zoomed in on what appeared to be a normal doorstop on the front porch, though the "doorstop" did have little lights and buttons and a tiny little radar dish on it. The weatherman explained that this was the only weather tracking system they had.

In the final part of the dream, the local weather switched over to an episode of The Simpsons. In what was obviously a spoof segment, the Simpsons family were in a spaceship, having a Star Trek type of adventure. Their ship was attacked and left in ruins. Then the Simpsons "woke up" and realized their real home was in ruins because it had been hit by a tornado! This was supposed to be the season finale cliffhanger, and it's about then point when I woke up.