I was visiting Debi (an attractive brunette who had been my girlfriend for a few weeks in the ninth grade in 1967) at her home in Portsmouth, Ohio. Debi had divorced her husband and she now wanted to see me. As she and I talked, I told her I had had a dream (which I had written in German) about meeting her just as we were now doing. When I pulled out the dream and tried to read it, one word in particular caught my attention: "Nadel" or "Nader" or something like that. I thought the word meant "serpent" in German. I had learned the word the previous day while reading the "Acts of the Apostles" in a passage where the word had been used to describe an incident wherein the Apostle Paul had been on the island of Malta and a serpent had crawled from the fire onto his hand.

John Smith (a desultory fellow my age whom I had met in Portsmouth in 1972 and who died in the mid 1970s) showed up at Debi's house. More tidy and clean than usual, John was also a bit thinner. I did not know if he would remember me at first, but when he did, we smiled and shook hands.

After Debi and I had been in the kitchen for a while, preparing to go to the beach, she and I walked into another room and sat next to each other on a couch. After I had put my arm around her, we began kissing and I lay back with her on top of me. I felt so happy, as if Debi were the woman for me.