So I had another dream last night. I found myself in on a construction site. The concrete slab was formed, the outside walls were up, but the interior was gutted. I immediately felt familiar with the situation, "Of Course! I'm framing." Yet I didn't recognize anybody else on the framing crew. I put on my belt, and walked to the trailer to unload my tools for a normal day of manual labor. To my surprise when I walked out the door I was met by the one and only Gordon Ramsay. Yes that Gordon Ramsay, world renown chef, and TVs face of the reality cooking show Hell's Kitchen. Initially I was a bit unnerved, I recently had a dream in which Chef Ramsay was a drug smuggler who forced me to smuggle cocaine into the public school system at the threat of the ones I love (I also remember something about talking sharks, or dolphins, I'm not quite sure. Either way though, it was a doosie). Skeptical as I may have been of his integrity, Chef Ramsay began laying out the ground rules for the competition. "WHAT COMPETITION?" I thought, "I didn't sign up for this. Well at least it's not illegal." Smacking his palm with the back of his hand Chef Ramsay spoke, "Let's begin, Yes? Today as part of your manhood challenge we'll be framing out the interior of this new home. Right! As part of the program you will be paired up into teams of two and receive one set of blue prints. Here's the kick of it, we only have one set of tools on location to share amongst the lot of you."
At this point I looked around to see who I might want to pair up with. A guy approached me and asked me if I wanted to work with him, strange thing is I knew this guy. He was on a the crew that decked out our house on Whitehall with my dad, my brother, and I. I didn't remember his name, and still don't so I just called him "dude" and "man" the whole time. Dude's a great framer, psycho as all get-out, but a great framer. His skin looks like a well seasoned baseball glove, and not those plastic looking ones you buy at wall-mart, the $250 kangaroo leather kind. He was rockin' the long curly hair, shirtless obviously, baggies, and a pair of Chuck Taylors. Dude sort of sontered as he walked kinda like John Wayne, or Hass from Bonanza. Dude smoked like a chimney, and from the sound of it his voice box has taken the toll, he said it keeps him skinny.
We were all aloud to pick one tool from the trailer to use the entire challenge. I took a skill saw, and Dude picked up a nail gun. We figured it was the obvious choice since it came with an air hook up. I don't know how we ended up with the nail gun and the saw, everybody else was waking around with hand tools while dude and I were setting up our fully powered tools.
Dude and I began on a wall near the back of the house. I was cutting and Dude was nailing. We were throwing walls up left and right, we even framed out several archways. I'm still not sure how we did so well, framing is often difficult without any form of tape measure. But that didn't stop us.
The single pervading thought I had throughout the whole dream was, "I better get a good lead in the framing part of the competition. Lord knows I'm going down in the automotive leg."
Though I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to think from this dream, I often wonder if I have some kind of subconscious desire to be a reality show contestant, or maybe a chef on Hell's Kitchen. For all I know maybe this is me doubting my manhood because of my lack of automotive skills. Either way I though it was a dream worth having.
