I had a dream last night that I, along with dozens of other shoppers at the mall, was being held hostage in a shoe store. There were three gunmen and neither of them was wearing a mask. All of them looked like they could have gone to high school with me. I don’t know exactly what they wanted. Was it an act of terrorism, did they want money, I don’t know. I was just there with the others and we all were extremely terrified--as if they had already killed someone though I don’t recall that actually happening. People were screaming and praying--it was a super frantic situation.
But check it; you know how you see scenes like that in a movie and you wonder what would you do if that was you? Well in the dream everyone else was afraid to look at the gunmen but I wasn’t. I looked away from them to blend in, but I would consistently check to see exactly where they were in relation to me. I was waiting for my chance to fight as if I were Steven Seagal or Wesley Snipes and when the tension had reached its apex and two of the three gunmen had left the room, I rushed the lone attacker and--well this is where the dream variation occurred.
In one variation as I had the guy on the ground, I screamed for someone else to get the gun which was in his sock. I don’t know how it went from his hand to his sock except to say that it was a dream, just stick with me. So the guy grabs the gun, and I scream for him to shoot the attacker but the gun is a revolver and he doesn’t know how to use it and then everything switches. Just like how the beat switches in my favorite song my Frank Ocean called Nights. In the other version after I dip the gunmen I get up and run. I’m waiting to be shot in the back like Ricky in “Boyz N the Hood”, but it never happens and I’m able to throw open the doors and run to the parking lot. Then I wake up.
In each version of the dream, I escape. In each version I’m a hero. In real life though it goes down a lot differently. Each time someone has pulled out a gun in my general vicinity, I have either frozen completely or walked away--I was everything short of heroic. I did not charge the gunmen or provoke him. I was not calm nor was I confrontational. My sole objective was to get out of the situation alive. In real life I’m much more of a survivor than a dreamer and I’m very ok with that. I’m not Jean Claude Van Damme or Ice Cube and my life is not a movie. I’m just trying to make it to tomorrow and write down my dreams, so I don’t forget them.