Woke up this Sunday morning at 4:50 and went downstairs to read in the quiet. While engaged in McCullough's excellent 1776, I fell asleep and dreamed a dream:
I had taken a job back as at Pizza Hut and was beginning my training in a restaurant in Buffalo, NY. As is often done in these situations, my executive status in the company was kept low-key, so my fellow employees assumed I was a new restaurant manager trainee. This Pizza Hut was actually a converted house (a situation I have never seen before) and so I was continually discovering elements that were quite "homey," including made beds and the like. At one point I recall stepping outside and seeing a line-up of rooms that housed elderly people, open to the outside, and watched over by distinguished servants. The location was distinctly reminiscent of one corner of Jackson Square in New Orleans.
Back in the Pizza House I quickly became an object of curiosity and interest. Unfortunately, as has been the case in my dreams many times, I realized I was dressed quite inappropriately for work, and was wearing skinny-legged blue jeans with holes and acid-wash streaks and zippers on the legs. I have never owned pants like this, so I could only presume I had accidentally put on someone else's. In any event, I felt quite self-conscious, being in management and all (plus, you know, completely out of style).
I still looked good in comparison to the rest of the crew, however, which was stranger than any I had remembered from my previous Pizza Hut years. One guy had no teeth, and another 50-ish man came in to get his check wearing a full-length see-through lacey dress that clearly revealed his bright-colored undies.
Overall, it struck me that things had changed and one can never go back, and once awake I was left to contemplate the subconscious meaning of it all: Whether I am facing facing seven fat years or lean years, or whether I was prepared to reenter the food service industry, or at least had the proper clothing to do so.
