The Interpretation of Dreams

I don't often have memorable dreams. Or, rather, I have such a lousy memory and as such don't remember what my brain was up to at night. But Wednesday night was different. And fear not, this is all G rated...

In my dream, we as a bishopric learned that some mega church in town was offering free health insurance to members of its congregation, and, for some reason, we wanted to find out more about this. So we set up appointments for each of us to meet with some of their big wigs to find out more.

However, in our desire to be efficient, we set separate appointments, and I was to meet with the #3 at this church, sort of the business head of the operation. I don't know who the other two members of the bishopric were meeting with; they vanished from the dream at this point.

After arriving at the high-rise where this church was headquartered, I waited in the lobby for my appointment. The fellow I met with was pretty dismissive of my inquiries about their program, and sent me packing hastily. So I sat in the lobby waiting for the others.

While I waited, I did what I typically do when I wait--I got out my PDA and tried to connect to a nearby wireless network to go online. (By the way, in my dream, my old Dell Axim was replaced by some fancy piece of equipment--I referred to it as "James Bond's PDA" when relating this dream to Summer yesterday.)

The network I connected to wound up being this church's network, and I suddenly found myself perusing their files. For some reason this seemed perfectly normal to me, and not at all ethically problematic. I found some files about this health insurance plan and exulted in my cleverness.

Until the guy I had met with earlier came storming out of his office and demanded to know what I was doing hacking into their secure network. I explained that I had connected unintentionally (but neglected to mention finding the files), and he took the device from my hand and tossed it to the ground. When it didn't break, he picked it up and threw it down again.

I picked up my PDA and walked out, a bit embarrassed, but mainly upset at this behavior. Walking to the parking lot, I found my car (in this dream I, ever the eco-friendly guy, drove a Smart Car) pushed up onto the sidewalk. Apparently throwing my handheld device on the ground wasn't enough for this bully, who had at some point gotten his heavies to move my car. So, I pushed my tiny car back on the pavement, got in, and drove off.

This dream raises several questions for me. Do I see other churches as competitors to ours? (I also saw a flyer in their headquarters for an upcoming lecture: "Destroying Mormonism From the Inside") Do I covet other people's fancy gadgets and fuel efficient cars? Do I secretly want to be a cyber-thief or spy of some sort? Do I empathize with the plight of the newly-unemployed and uninsured to the point that I want the church to investigate ways to provide insurance for them? Had I simply spent too much time at the meetinghouse Wednesday night? What would Freud say?