I had a dream on Thursday night that felt so real I wondered the next day if it had actually happened.
I dreamt that I was at work, working away as usual, when my supervisor called me over to her desk to show me a posting on our internal job page.
“Sweetie, I think they had you in mind when they wrote this,” she kept saying. And it seemed like they had. The job was my current employer’s equivalent of the job I had and loved during my last months in California. I have hoped for a similar opportunity since I’ve been home, and, thrilled to hear about this opening, I made a mental note to send in my resume as soon as I got home. If the dream continued beyond this point, I don’t remember it.
On Friday, though, I remembered the exchange with my supervisor and at first thought that it had happened the day before. After further thought, though, I realized that not only would it have been a very weird exchange to have, but, more importantly, I hadn’t worked the previous two days and so hadn’t spoken with anyone from work since Tuesday. I was disappointed but thought I’d take a moment to go ahead and check out the internal job postings for Harrisburg since I hadn’t in at least a couple of months.
There were two listings, one which had been open for nearly two months and I was clearly not qualified for, and one for “Local Operations Support” — which turned out to be exactly the job I’d dreamt about, posted the day before.
My chances of getting it are slim, but the sheer coincidence/magic of it has me hopeful, and only a bit weirded out. What made it seem even stranger was an experience I had just today (Saturday, that is — still today since I haven’t slept yet).
I was waiting to pull out of a gas station onto a very busy street early this evening when I saw in my side mirror a woman running toward my car, frantically waiving her arms. She was slightly weathered looking with a fake tan and too much hairspray, both of which were perfectly complemented by the floral tattoo on her upper arm. I couldn’t tell where she’d come from, but rolled down my window.
“You have a tire going flat! It’s this one, in the back here?” She pointed to the rear driver side tire, looking back at the driver of the car behind me for confirmation. “This one,” she restated, having received it. “You don’t want to go too far.”
Having just pumped gas while standing immediately next to the indicated tire, I figured it couldn’t be that bad and decided to start driving home anyway. There were no symptoms of a flat during the short drive and I carefully inspected both rear tires upon parking in front of my apartment building. I found only that the rear passenger side tire was slightly low, but not nearly low enough to inspire the kind of panic that had appeared in the woman’s voice — and it was the wrong side anyway. I shrugged it off and forgot about it in my rush to get ready to go out for the night.
On my way back home around 1:30 AM, though, while rounding a curve on 83, I felt a small pop, then began hearing a regular “thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack,” like playing cards in the spoke of a bicycle wheel but far more ominous. When I got home, sure enough, an enormous piece of metal had embedded itself in my rear driver side tire.
By the time I wake up tomorrow, wishing it were a dream, I’m sure the tire will be completely flat.