Dream of: 21 February 1998 "Story With A Moral"
I flew into Mexico City, Mexico, went straight downtown and began walking around a downtown street. I was in an opulent area, with lavish stores lining the street. In the interior of one block was an enclosed mall.
As I walked, I realized I had my billfold (containing quite a bit of cash) in my rear left pocket. I had recently heard stories that many robberies had been taking place on the streets of Mexico City. I walked back into the mall area and entered a high class store. I pulled the money out of my billfold and tried to figure out where I could stash it. I thought of putting the cash in my sock, but then I decided to stick the money inside the band of my underwear in front. I decided to keep the one dollar bills in my billfold and I sorted through the bills to pick out the ones. I had more ones than I had anticipated. I pulled out the twenties and fives to stick in my underwear.
As I sorted the money, a woman (30-35 years old) with light brown hair walked up beside me and began making hand signs to someone standing on the outside of the store. I suspiciously looked at her. I thought she might be making signs to someone to rob me. She looked at me, picked up on my suspicions, and quickly assured me that she was signaling someone outside about something else, and she was not plotting to rob me. I stuck the money inside my underwear and then talked with the woman for a few minutes.
When she and I finally separated, I walked on through the mall. I became hungry, walked into a restaurant, and ate something with cheese on it. When I walked back out of the restaurant, I again ran into the woman, and she asked me how my meal had been. I told her it had been satisfactory, but nothing special. As we talked, I thought it curious that she was still standing here waiting, and slowly I realized we were in the lobby of a hotel. She explained to me that she was presently staying in the hotel in room number 86. I thought she had told me the number because she obviously wanted to see more of me.
We continued walking through the mall, which I thought was a safe area. But as we walked, a fellow (around 25 years old) in a light-blue shirt began walking very close to the woman, crowding in on my space. He began talking. He spoke good English and looked like an American. He barged in our conversation and he asked me how my meal had been. Since the woman didn't appear to know him, I simply shoved him out of my way. He reacted in a most bizarre fashion. He became extremely angry and apparently he wanted to fight me. He looked extremely threatening. I even thought he might pull out a gun.
He was now about four meters away from me. Other people walking in the mall stopped to watch. A small crowd of 10-15 people circled around. Obviously the man was a very dangerous character. I hollered out, "Guard! Guard!"
Two guards were coming down the hall toward us. Another guard was standing only about a meter away from the man, but the guard had his back turned toward the man and wasn't looking at him. All three guards had their guns drawn.
The man pulled out a small container of mace, but he had trouble figuring out how to dispense it. Finally a tiny squirt of mace came out. Then he figured out what he was doing. He aimed the mace at me and the woman and a big shot of mace spurted toward us. I turned my back toward him, but I didn't know what was going to happen to the woman. I thought the mace would definitely hit me in the back and I wondered what it would be like. The mace hit me in the back. I thought it must have also hit the woman.
Finally the guard closest to the man turned around toward him and hit the man in the side of his head with his gun. The man fell over onto the ground. Obviously the danger was over. Everyone watching, including myself, was practically in a state of shock.
As the woman, the crowd of people and I all began walking away from the scene, I realized we were all headed to the airport. We were all in a hurry because we were going to leave Mexico City. We all walked outside and boarded a bus. The woman was sitting next to me on my right. I noticed that her left front tooth was disproportionately long and ugly. But she still seemed like such a nice person, even with the unsightly tooth.
When I reflected on what had just happened, I felt bad, because I realized I hadn't tried to protect the woman. When we had been in danger, I had only been concerned about my own safety. Apparently other people also felt bad, because everyone else on the bus (except the woman and I) stood up in the bus and began giving little testimonials about how they felt. Finally I stood up and talked about how ashamed I was that I hadn't tried to help the woman and how I had acted so cowardly. I talked about how the woman had met me, walked around with me and how nice she had been to me. I said, "She enclosed me."
I felt like a complete coward. I could have stepped in front of her and shielded her from the lunatic. Instead I had acted like a complete coward.
I could tell that the woman was very pleased with what I had to say, as if she were happy to hear me expressing my feelings. As I told the tale, I began to think maybe some good would come out of this after all. The woman seemed to feel good about my confession, and that made me happy because I did care about her.
Suddenly everything that had happened seemed to fit together in my mind like some kind of story. Maybe I could write a short story about this whole thing. everything that had happened seemed to hold together like a short story. There seemed to be some kind of moral here. I could write this up as a story and the story itself would serve as something good coming out of a bad situation.
Copyright 2005 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
