Monday, August 20, 2007
Your change, sir
It was a pleasant dream at first, I was playing acoustic guitar in a band at a loose recording session, & nobody seemed to notice that I can't play guitar & was plucking combinations of notes that fit with the country-rockish music (I never remember the music in my dreams, it rarely happens & it's usually pretty nice & may even be original). But I was wishing I was at a piano or organ. Afterward, I'm in the backseat of a car with some of the musicians at a gas station, & we're pooling money for gas, & I reach out the window & hand the attendant a twenty, which he tucks in the breast pocket of his greasy shirt. Now he's got more than enough to pay for the gas & owes us change, but starts walking away. I say, "Hey, I gave you a twenty." He says, "No you didn't." So I say to another man working there, "I just gave that guy a twenty & we have some change coming." The man shrugs. He's also carrying a pipe wrench. It's not a big chain station, an Exxon or Shell, but pumps in front of a funky repair shop, & pursuing the matter is not only pointless, it's probably dangerous. That part of the dream ended, my unconscious mind lucid enough to abandon the narrative thread & move on. But I was annoyed when I woke up. (This seems related to yesterday's post, but the feeling was entirely different.)
A Jersey Transit ticket machine ate a fiver last month late on a Wednesday afternoon just as a train was due. It surprised me because those machines are reliable. It took the bill & clunked into the no bills no change mode, nothing happened on the ticket selection screen. Couldn't even cancel. I knew I'd never see that $5 again unless I made a special trip to the ticket window when it was open & fought for a refund. I also knew I'd gotten much more than $5 in a free trips over the past year from conductors not collecting my ticket on crowded cars between Newark & Elizabeth. I have a card that lets me buy tickets on the train without the surcharge, so I said to the pestiferous panhandler lurking near the machine & watching me, "You can have that five bucks if you can get it out of there." As I walked down the platform to meet the train, he was banging on the ticket machine & pressing all the buttons. I'm sure it kept him busy for awhile.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
A Jersey Transit ticket machine ate a fiver last month late on a Wednesday afternoon just as a train was due. It surprised me because those machines are reliable. It took the bill & clunked into the no bills no change mode, nothing happened on the ticket selection screen. Couldn't even cancel. I knew I'd never see that $5 again unless I made a special trip to the ticket window when it was open & fought for a refund. I also knew I'd gotten much more than $5 in a free trips over the past year from conductors not collecting my ticket on crowded cars between Newark & Elizabeth. I have a card that lets me buy tickets on the train without the surcharge, so I said to the pestiferous panhandler lurking near the machine & watching me, "You can have that five bucks if you can get it out of there." As I walked down the platform to meet the train, he was banging on the ticket machine & pressing all the buttons. I'm sure it kept him busy for awhile.
Labels: dreams
