Bad Dream 190 -- Where's My Briefcase?

In my dream, I am back in my childhood home in suburban Baltimore.  I am in the house preparing to leave for an assignment, which is either a presentation for my work or a college-level class.  The dream doesn't make it clear which is the case.  

I'm pretty much ready to go.  All I need to do is retrieve my briefcase, which has documents I will need for this upcoming assignment.

I go to the spot in the house where I normally leave my briefcase and it isn't there.  I can't imagine why not -- I almost always leave it in the same place.  And the time available to get to the assignment is running short, and I really don't want to be late.  

I move around the house looking in each room (which are actual rooms I recall) for my case, with no luck.  As I keep moving, a younger sibling sidles up to me and tells me that Richard -- our older brother -- had taken the case.

I go upstairs to where I think Richard will be and find him lounging on the bed.  He looks up at me, sees that I'm distressed, and gets a smirk on his face.  I explain to him in loud and rapid-fire language the inconvenience that he's causing.  He almost looks apologetic.  Not quite, but almost.  He points to a collection of things against a wall and tells me that the case is in that pile of stuff.  

I go to the pile and examine each and every object, but the case is simply not there.  I look at Richard and tell him that. His face changes and he gets up off the bed and comes over to the pile.  He then assures me that he left it there, and now has no idea who might have taken it or where it got off to.  

I am thoroughly aware that his comments might simply be Richard ratcheting up the prank to a higher level, but there's no way I can be sure whether he's still pranking me or is genuinely unsure what happened to the briefcase.  

He looks as if he's about to start looking for the case himself, but there's no reason I should hang around him when I should simply be continuing the search.

By this time, I am boiling mad and deeply concerned about what my absence at this assignment will mean for me.  The excuse of "I'm late because I couldn't find my briefcase" is just too close to "My dog ate my homework." 

I go back downstairs to repeat my search while trying to think of what else I could be doing to minimize the damage that's being done to me and my career.  

I hear my Dad say softly "Being angry is not going to help."  And I understand that, if I could let the anger go, I might be capable of more rational thoughts and activities, but just then I want to hang onto my anger and frustration.  

Bad Dream 189 -- Spinning Plates

In my dream, I am standing in a field on a nice sunny day.  I have a few friends standing nearby and some other folks a little farther off.  They are visitors to our little gathering.  I am holding a spinning plate in one hand and the appropriate spin stick in the other.  

The deal is that I'm supposed to spin the plate up onto the stick and perform a few tricks to educate(?) impress(?) convince(?) the visitors of my skill with the plate -- but my dream does not inform me as to exactly why I'm doing this.  My friends seem to think it's important, and they are telling the visitors how terrific my skill is with the plate -- "Just wait until he (that is, me) gets this thing going!  It's amazing!"

I toss the plate in the air with a flick of the wrist to give it some initial rotation.  But I misjudge the procedure somehow so that the plate bounces briefly onto the stick and then falls to the ground.

My friends assure our visitors that that happens occasionally.  Not a problem.  Boy, are you going to be impressed!  

I pick up the plate and try again, but the result is the same.  My friends smile weakly at our visitors as I pick the plate up off the ground again.

Third time is not the charm.  Yet another failure.

My friends try to make a joke out of the situation, but it doesn't help much.  The visitors have clearly seen about as much as they need to.

After the fourth failure, the visitors turn and start to walk away.  

One of my friends, Kurt Rheinheimer -- a boyhood best buddy -- walks over to me.  He's quite angry.  Looking straight into my face but talking loudly so that all my friends can hear, he says that I screwed up on purpose.  Why that's the case isn't clear in the dream, but he obviously felt that he had something to gain personally from my success at spinning the plate -- something that now simply wouldn't come to pass. 

At this moment, I become aware of an explanation as to my failures and tell Kurt equally loudly that it made perfect sense for me to fail, given all the pressure I was under as the visitors looked on.  To help make the point, I pick up the plate and successfully spin it on the stick.  I'm not at all sure that my reasoning was honest and true, but it felt good to say.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I just made up the explanation to bring the total event to a conclusion.