It was spring term of my senior year in college, and yet again I had fucked up and not gone to a class all semester and was going to have to take another class during summer to graduate. BUT WAIT! I went to my dream college advisor (because I sure didn’t have one in college), and WHAT? I had a 2.4 in the class I had neglected. As long as I studied and did well on the exam, I would be fine. ✨

I was binge watching a French cop show, which took place in Marseille. As I was watching, I felt something in my hair. It was a metal hook that you’d use to hang a Christmas ornament. I noticed a Christmas tree in the corner of the room. I kept collecting the hooks from my hair. There were many of them.

I was in a mini school bus, which was parked in the driveway of the house where I grew up. There were a few other people in the bus with me. Out the window we saw what we thought were smallish cows. One larger than the other. They were on the patio, not far from us. We started taking out our phones to take pictures. Then one of them, the smaller one, came right up to the window and looked at us. He or she was not really a cow, but some kind of furry brown and white creature, which stood up on hind legs to look into the bus window. The animal seemed friendly and like it was trying to communicate.

I decided to leave the bus (even though I was a little unsure whether these creatures were safe). But we started to communicate and learn about each other’s culture. We also had some fun with a garden hose, which seemed like a novelty for the animals. At one point the small one asked for some tissues to blow his or her nose. Then, after a while, they decided to leave. It wasn’t clear to me whether they were an exotic species or something from another planet. But I was glad that I had had the encounter.

I was a student at a small, liberal arts college in New England. I signed up for a course that was held on the campus of another school. So one day some friends and I piled into a school bus and went to that campus. The course was about how to be a camp counselor. 

When we got to the campus, we walked around the athletic fields but didn’t see anyone at first. Then we saw some people in matching polo shirts playing kickball. We realized that these would be our instructors.

One of them, the pitcher, looked at me and called out my name. Except it was my real name, not the name I had in this “film” that I was in. I turned to a girl—a friend—next to me, somewhat panicked. What do I do now? I recognized the instructor who had called my name—in real life, he was one of my RAs from freshman year in college. I wasn’t sure if this moment had wrecked the film or if I could improvise my way out of it.

I was in a family of five (maybe I was the father? maybe the little boy?), and we were vacationing in the Hamptons long ago, maybe in the 1940s. Our family primarily used an elaborate, multi-room tent, but it was planted alongside houses, and we somehow had access to an old house nearby. Maybe it belonged to a grandparent or aunt.

One weekend, some adult friends were visiting, so we were staying in the house. We all went outside to the beach. The water was coming right up to the house. We were all floating in the calm waters. But then the tide started coming in, and the waves were getting bigger. The water started pushing into the house, which was up on stilts. The waves were getting bigger and bigger. A big one was about to crash over our heads. 

I was in a crowd of people at night, near a fairly busy intersection, when we saw a lion that had escaped from the zoo. It was smallish, without a mane. It crossed the road, came toward us, and made its way through the crowd.

Suddenly I felt it clamping down on my right hand. The bite was painful and the lion was not letting go. Finally I crammed my camera in its mouth and freed my hand.

Someone called the police. When they arrived, the camera was still wedged in the lion’s mouth, preventing more biting. Meanwhile my hand started to go numb. I regretted that I didn’t get any good pictures of the lion, though.

I was on vacation somewhere (maybe the Netherlands?), and I was walking around looking for something to photograph. I turned a corner and a beautiful, vivid picture came into frame. Close to me were a row of orange taxis in a parking lot—old cars, but in perfect condition. Past the cars was a marina, and I could see a large passenger ship off the shore. The sky was deep blue. The whole scene was framed on top by the overhanging roof of a small white building next to the parking lot. I dialed in camera settings and started taking pictures.

Two women showed up and walked past me in the frame, but I didn’t mind. But then some guy showed up and planted a large camera with a tripod right in front of me. I was disappointed that my turn was over.

A small, black tornado came through our yard, uprooting one tree, wrecking a picket fence, and also (fortunately) taking out an old dead tree, depositing it exactly in the best place possible. 

I had a very small hot air balloon, and actually it wasn’t filled with hot air so much as my breath. There was no basket, I just had to hold on (maybe with a rope?). But it took me up high in the sky and I had amazing views. I flew over fields and, after launching from a beach, over the ocean. If I wanted to descend, I just had to let a little air out of the balloon. After several flights, I realized that it might be a little dangerous, especially as I saw some very dark clouds approaching, but I decided to go up again anyway.

I went to see my therapist, who was the comedian/actor/podcaster Marc Maron, in San Francisco. I thought it was going to be a one-on-one session, but there were other people there, just milling around. At one point, a doctor came in to start a pre-op checklist for a lobotomy. I said I hadn’t agreed to that. And I decided to leave. When I went outside, I discovered my car had been stolen. 

I was working in an office that looked like the patio area outside the house where I grew up. I noticed some dried grass near the leg of my desk, and I started digging. To my amazement, I found a small female sheep under the floorboards, eating strawberries and nursing a baby sheep. I brought my coworkers over to show them, and they said: “Oh, that? That’s just Kevin.”

Connor Murphy from DEH had gotten a Hogwarts acceptance letter (also for some reason in this he was friends with evan), and he was in ravenclaw. I don’t even watch or read harry potter. 

I was in a somewhat small apartment-slash-spaceship traveling in outer space with my wife and teenager. After resolving some technical issue, we realized that we were on course for home, but that getting there would take a while. And then, suddenly, we looked out the window and saw a planet. We were going to land there, and as we rapidly descended we saw both volcanic activity and industrialized spaces. We landed in an area that looked similar to an airport tarmac. It was night there. We put on our space suits and decided to go out and explore.

I was in a row boat or canoe with a friend. Swimming alongside of us were groups of seals. Small, very adorable seals. Always in pairs. They were swimming below and above the water kind of like dolphins. I tried to take a video with my phone. One came out of the water and put its head very close to my face. I was petting it.

I was using a down escalator, holding a brown wool sweater, when the sweater’s sleeve got caught in the side of the escalator, just under the moving handrail. Gradually the sweater unraveled.