“That’s it. That’s my dream,” Ryan concluded. “What do you think it means?”

“So before your walk-off, World Series winning, grand slam home run landed on the other side of the wall, the baseball hit a naked Scarlett Johansson in the vagina?”

“Yep.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that you want to have sex with Scarlett Johansson.”

Ryan chuckled and sheepishly added, “You’re probably right.”

“Here’s one for you. This dream is the most vivid dream I’ve ever dreamt. To me, that makes it the most important as well.”

“I’m all ears.”

“The setting was right out of the latest Rambo movie–the one in Burma. Do you remember it?”

“Not really.”

“Well there was a part where the bad guys were torturing the civilians. They made them walk across this ankle-deep rice paddy pool of muddy water in the jungle. Picture a square pond thingy. The bad guys had thrown in a bunch of landmines and then were forcing the folks to cross it at gunpoint. It was kind of a variation of Russian roulette. The bad guys were all betting in the background.”

“I think I’m with ya.”

“Okay. So in my dream, the water was deeper, but only like thigh-deep, and roped off in lanes like a lap pool would be. There were no good guys or bad guys, just people. And there were bleachers on the sides, where everyone sat waiting for their turn. It was some sort of military training thing-”

“Wait. Did you have this dream while you were still in?”

“-No. This was after I got out. But not too much after.”

“Okay.”

“Back to the pool. In my dream, there were no landmines. Instead, there were anacondas or boa constrictors or something. Whatever their name, they were huge snakes that wrap around their prey to kill it. What the people who were running the training wanted us to do was feel what it was like to be wrapped up by the snakes. But obviously they didn’t want us dead, so they would kill the snake before the snake killed us.”

“No thank you.”

“Right? Anyhow, what was supposed to happen was we would climb into a lane and start wading across to the other side. Then the snake attacks, and then, not a moment too soon, the staff jumps in to cut us free.”

“Crazy.”

“Well, here’s the kicker. A buddy from work was in the dream. He was also a veteran. He was sitting beside me on the bleacher, towel-drying off. He had already done it. I was waffling back and forth unable to decide whether I wanted to or not. I knew it would be probably the coolest man-card hole-punch ever to be able to say that I was wrapped up by a thirty foot long killer snake, but I’m not terribly fond of snakes as it is, nor did I really want to trust my life to the hope that other men would time their rescue just right. So I was trying to tell him that I didn’t want to do it. He began to kid me about being afraid and I got angry and serious and began to tell him how I was done with all this “prove myself” nonsense. But then, right as I was sure I was leaving, I began to think about the glory and nearly decided to just do it.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I don’t know. I woke up before I had made up my mind.”