I was watchin’ a kung fu movie on TV and I got the munchies. So I had two slices of leftover pizza at about midnight and Minnie said that’s what gave me this weird dream – and let me tell yis, it was the weirdest dream I ever had in my life. No way, I says, pizza don’t do that (unless they were funny mushrooms or somethin’).
Anyways, the morning after I get up from this weird dream, I went to Tim Horton’s as 
usual to have coffee with Timmy and Tommy and Murph and Cyril (yes, Cyril too, even though Minnie and Joan are still fightin’ and not talkin’ to one another).
Holy cripes, boys, the weird dream I had last night, I said to them when we sat down.
Oh yeah? Tommy says. What was it about?
Now Tommy, see, thinks he’s a bit of an expert on everything, so he perked right up when he heard I had a weird dream so he could tell me what it means. I think he seen a show on dream interpretation one time years ago, so automatically he considers himself Sigmund Friggin’ Freud.
Well, I says, I dreamt I was drivin’ along in my truck and Minnie and the kids were with me …
See, Tommy says, that’s like your life, whenever you’re movin’ down a road or somethin’ it’s a symbol of your journey through life.
Murph rolled his eyes at the interruption.
Anyways, I said, there were all these signs that we were comin’ up on a tollbooth and Minnie kept lookin’ in her purse and in the dash but we didn’t have enough money to pay the toll …
See, Tommy says, that means you got bills in your life and you’re afraid you don’t have enough to pay them …
Holy cripes, Murph says (he got a temper, eh) – are you gonna let him tell his story or what, doctor?
Yeah – sorry, like, Tommy says.
OK, so we get to this tollbooth and we don’t got the money to pay, so this old woman workin’ the toll booth tells me to move over into a special lane.
Was the old woman somebody you knew? Tommy says.
Holy jumpins, Murph growled and banged his hand on the table. Will ya quit cuttin’ him off? I wanna hear the damn story.
Sorry, like, Tommy says.
Well, I says, she kinda looked like Minnie if Minnie was about 90 years old.
Tommy raised his eyebrows and stuck out his bottom lip, like he had an idea about that, but he didn’t dare say anything with Murph glarin’ at him.
So anyways, I says, we get in this special lane and we can see right away, the lane just leads to a cliff, and we can see the cars in front of us get to the edge of the cliff and just drive over and fall off. So Minnie and the kids start screamin’. Anyways, for some reason I start fiddlin’ with the radio until I find like this special station. It don’t got music, it got like this weird rumblin’ noise and then all of a sudden we’re not in the truck anymore, we’re ridin’ on the back of a dragon and the noise from the radio became like the dragon’s roar.
For some reason, I says to Minnie, even though it makes no sense – What do you think you are, an astronaut? And she says, no, I’m a Chinaman and *poof* she turns into Bruce Lee. Now, normally, Minnie don’t look like Bruce Lee at all, so this kind of surprised me. So I went to ask a question about it, but as soon as I opened my mouth, Bruce Lee gave me a karate chop right on the neck and knocked me off the dragon. So I was tumblin’ down with my eyes closed, but when I opened them, I wasn’t fallin’ – I was sittin’ in a bathtub that was full of pancakes instead of water.
Pancakes? Tommy said, because he couldn’t help himself.
Murph growled and cocked his eyebrow up into his ball cap and Tommy said – Sorry, like.
Yeah, pancakes, I said. And Cyril was standin’ on the toilet, wearin’ a gold bikini, pourin’ syrup all over me and the pancakes. Only then I realized, it wasn’t syrup, he was pourin’ out, it was loonies. Me and all the pancakes were getting’ loonies poured all over us, and that’s when I realized we’d have enough to pay the toll.
So I grabbed two fistfuls of loonies, struggled my way out of the pancakes, and then ran out of the bathroom to go find Minnie and the kids in the truck so we could finally pay the tollbooth.
(I took a sip of my coffee and they all realized I was done.)
That’s it? Murph said.
Yup, I said. Minnie found me naked, sleepwalkin’ down the hall yellin’ for Bruce Lee to come back with his dragon.
She musta thought you were mental, Timmy said.
Oh, I said, she thinks I’m mental anyways.
All right, Murph said, finally turnin’ back to Tommy. Tell us what that all means if you’re such an expert.
Hmmmm, Tommy said. I dunno. Any chance you ate cold pizza before you fell asleep in front of that kung fu movie that was on TV last night?
John McNeil 