In Dreams

IN DREAMS

THE YOUNG DONALD TRUMP awoke one morning with the memory of a dream still fresh in his mind: He was in a small neighborhood drug store, wandering up and down the office supply aisle, pausing now and then in front of the spiral notebooks, the Scotch tape, the erasers, staples, felt-tip markers, and pens and pencils. He stopped in front of the Paper Mate selection and removed first one, then another, of the encased pens from the projecting hook. Donald noted the words "Fine Point" on one and "Medium Point" on the other. But for the life of him, he could not decide which of the two pens to buy. The dream ended there.
When he awoke, he puzzled but a moment over the possible meaning of the dream before dressing and going downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. The rest of the day at school, he never gave the matter another thought.
The next night, however, the same dream came to him: the office supply aisle, his reaching and holding with indecision the plastic encased Paper Mate pens. And when he awoke, the dream lingered on in his mind longer than the morning before; at the breakfast table he thought he could detect a troubled, even a questioning look on the face of his mother as she greeted him and served up his steak and eggs.
For the next five nights--a total of seven in a row now--young Donald Trump dreamed the same dream of pens.
On that seventh morning, he mentioned the fact to his mother, who stared at him long and hard. They were not used to conversation together, but on this occasion, his mother stopped in mid-stride and after a moment, said in a quiet, hesitating voice: "I thought so." And further: "I've had that same dream."
It was Donald's turn to look long and hard.
"For the past seven nights too," she continued.
It turned out that Donald's father had been dreaming of pens as well. Throughout the day the three of them mentioned the dream to friends. And each friend in turn confessed to having spent the past seven nights standing undecided (in dreams) before Paper Mate pens.
That evening, before going to bed, Donald and his mother and father, for the first time in many a year, knelt down and prayed together. They prayed for an answer to their dreams--a sign, if you will.
When they awoke in the morning, they met each other in the hallway with smiles on their faces--relieved, happy smiles. Their prayers had been answered: Neither Donald nor either of his parents had dreamed of pens. But then, over breakfast, Donald cheerfully went on to relate how, instead of pens, he had dreamed that his hands were in his pockets. The joy on both his mother's and father's face dropped like a weight: They too had dreamed of having their hands in their pockets.
Throughout the busy morning, they learned that everyone they met and talked to had dreamed of having their hands in their pockets.
The elder Trumps decided it was time to call a press conference.
By evening, their phones were ringing with calls from people--complete strangers--telling them that they too had been dreaming of pens and pockets.
The television crews and newspaper reporters arrived in the morning for their stories. Yes, it was true, they reported to their eager audiences: for seven nights in a row, scores of people in the city had been dreaming of having difficulty deciding which Paper Mate pen to purchase; and for two nights in a row now they had dreamed of having their hands in their pockets.
The media did follow-ups: they went to young Donald's school and, sure enough, the entire student body, faculty, and staff had dreamed in unison; they went, with cameras and crew, into supermarkets and car washes; they went into the homes of people who worked nights and slept days to see if they too had had the same dreams. They did. They all did. One man, who claimed to have had insomnia for years, stated for the television cameras that had gathered at his home, that even in his brief moments of half-sleep exhaustion, he would awaken to find the tips of his fingers working their way toward his pockets.
By the fourth day, the national news networks had picked up on the story; and it turned out that all across the country people were having the same dream. Each and every night. It became the number one topic on both daytime and nighttime radio talk shows.
On the sixth day one caller called in to say that the night before she had not dreamed of pockets at all, but of opening a car door. Reporters and the police rushed to her home, but under vigorous cross-examination, she broke down and admitted she had been lying; some friends had put her up to it, she said.
For all their concern, Mom and Pop Trump were somewhat relieved that the spotlight had shifted away from their own quiet life. Things were beginning to settle back to normal.
But then, after seven nights of pocket dreams, Donald awoke to report over breakfast that he had dreamed a new dream: of lying prone on a carpet with his arms outstretched, above his head. His mother and father both shook their heads slowly back and forth and admitted--now in resignation--that they too had dreamed of lying prone on a carpet. They braced themselves and then, because they were still curious, turned on the television set to see that all regular programming had been interrupted to cover this new dream that was now circling the globe.
Indeed, news journalists in Tel Aviv and Bangkok, Sao Paulo and Tokyo, Sydney and Amsterdam and Zimbabwe were broadcasting live that individuals across all the continents were dreaming of lying prone on wooden floors, on tile floors, on linoleum floors, carpets, rugs, even on the dirt--on anything they could find. These variations provided a twist that sent the media on a new search for the meaning of these dreams. It added, they said, a "new equation" to the already puzzling phenomenon.
Despite all the hooplaloo, and although the media continued to present it as a top news story for their audiences, most of the people in the world--with the exception of those pockets of the United States and Western Europe--went on with their lives pretty much as before: if everyone's dreaming the same dream night after night, so what? Who cares? What's the problem?
The United Nations, however (under the urgings of the U.S. Ambassador in New York City), called an emergency meeting, while the President met in a special joint session of Congress to give an update on the situation. NASA proposed a project they said could be in place by the end of the year. Members of the opposition party in Congress, however, called first for a thorough investigation of the home planet before any extra-terrestrial adventures be initiated. There were regions on the Earth, they said, that still may not be dreaming alike, and it would be foolish to set out recklessly before all avenues had been fully explored.
The U.N. similarly had difficulties with its member nations--particularly in the Third World--who were resisting, primarily in the name of sovereignty.
Throughout all of this, the young Donald Trump remained, on the surface at least, aloof. He pursued his studies at the junior high school with the same vigor as always, he pestered his parents about the car he'd been wanting them to buy for him, he made plans to ask out the Bentley girl who sat next to him in biology. . . .
. . . but inside--inside, he churned and churned and churned. Never again, he said, would he let opportunity slip through his fingers.