Shades of the Rarebit Fiend

I had thought about writing a post about the blue funk I was in earlier this week but ditched it. It was good to write about it but you don't need to read a tale of woe. (I'm doing much better, thank you.) Instead I welcome you to another voyage into the realm of my warped little brain.

For the most part when I sleep I'm aware of my dreams. They're usually the surreal sort of stuff where I'm floating or flying around or watching things happening. Occasionally I'm active in the dream, either being chased by someone with evil intentions or interacting with other people real and imagined. My dreams are always in color. Even ones that happen at night have color to them. I'll remember smidgens of them most of the time, but occasionally I'll have one that's stuck in my memory bank long enough for me to recall it.

Last night I dreamed I was on a ship returning from Hawaii with a number of tourists. The ship was a lot like a ferry in the inside (I've never been on a cruise ship so I guess my brain took memories of ferries I've been on crossing Puget Sound). The tourists were mostly senior citizens and a good number of them seemed to be from New York City. We were all in a windowed room that looked out onto the deck where a number of other people were standing around either talking to each other or watching the water as we sailed for our home port. It was evening, the sky darkening, with clear weather and calm seas. A pretty pleasant trip for the most part.

I'm looking out the window and see this clean-shaven fairly young man with dark, well-cut short hair (think Matthew Broderick) ease up to stand next to a young woman who is at the rail. She glances at him but says nothing. He glances at her then says something brief. She says nothing so he continues with his brief comments. Next thing I see is that he's turned into the Pink Panther, complete with cigarette holder, and his tail is gently waving back and forth as he's chatting up with this woman. She smiles a little. At another bon mot she giggles. She suddenly becomes a female version of the Pink Panther.

All of a sudden, there's commotion from another part of the deck. The Pink Panther suddenly changes back to the man and runs off with three uniformed boatmen after him. The woman regains her shape as a woman and looks befuddled.

For the rest of the dream it's this man going up to women, chatting up with them, becoming the Pink Panther when he has their attention, then changing the women to female versions only to be chased off by officials. This continues for some time until we arrive at our port and in the commotion of disembarkation the man is lost.

I have to say the Pink Panther was my favorite cartoon character when I was a kid: suave, resourceful, and unruffled by circumstances. How he ended up being this man who seduces women on a ship I don't know. Did I want to be the man? Or did I want to be the woman? I don't know. There is one thing though and that is I had macaroni and cheese last night. Not the stuff from the box -- the real McCoy of grated Tillamook medium over elbow mac. So it's entirely possible that my dream stemmed from an overindulgence of cheese a la the Rarebit Fiend.

Ba dm ba dmmmmm. Ba dm ba dmmmmmm.