The Con Artist

I dreamed that I was back at college, only it was also combined with my job now. There was a little coffee place where I had to go do my time card for work. I saw some people happily packing to go to a Renaissance Festival. I thought wistfully how it must be nice to have a focused need to travel, like a way of life. I thought about how I couldn't suddenly feel this way, that these people had been doing this for years and had developed a lifelong common interest and bond with one another. I went into the coffee place where I would do my time card, and I overheard a man say to his mother that they needed to get to Cincinnati but didn't have a way, as something had gone wrong. I had a car and was going to go home to Cincinnati myself from college where I was now, so I offered them a ride, and they happily accepted. I felt good that I could do something nice for these people. I quickly started to realize that the man was controlling. He was driving my car. And he was driving it very fast. Suddenly I realized that I didn't have my suitcase from college and that I hadn't punched out on my timecard from work. I told them that we needed to go back. The man was very aggravated even though we were not that far away. He seemed to be gay and had a strong affect. He also had a hot temper and a manic sensibility, and I started to think he probably had a personality disorder. Perhaps he was antisocial, a charmer at first, then mean, uncaring, and a con artist. I hoped for the best but I was feeling very wary. The mother was more passive and less conniving but she was going to follow whatever her son wanted. I could not count on her. I got the man to turn around to take me back to "78th and Broadway" where the coffee place was (even though it was in Yellow Springs, Ohio where I went to college). Instead, though, he dropped me off at the wrong place that looked similar. He said he would wait for me but he didn't, and he and the mother drove off, stealing my car. I was not surprised and thought to myself, oh, well, I tried to do something good for someone, it didn't work out, and now I just have to work with what I've got. It was night, and I was in rural Ohio. Somehow I found a bike, and I started riding it down a hill in complete darkness, looking for the coffee place. It was so scary. I was riding down a road and couldn't see in front of me at all. There was no light, and the road was surrounded on both sides by forests. I decided to call my parents to come get me, but they wouldn't come or were delayed. Again, I felt that I had to just deal with what I had, despite a sense of deep aloneness in the world. I was still completely lost. I was able to find an abandoned building to stay in, and there were also two young homeless children that I found myself taking care of as well. Then my mom finally did come, several years later, to pick me up in a very small car, and, with the children in the back seat with their stuff, there was barely room for my stuff which I had accumulated while on my own. I held it close to me, as I felt it was all I had, along with my children and their stuff, and did not want to let any of it go. I squeezed into the car so that we could go home. I kept looking back at the children to make sure that they were alright. I had a tentative feeling that we would all make it.