The following story will probably have you laughing hysterically. If you have a weak bladder, or are prone to peeing your pants, I strongly urge you to go to the bathroom BEFORE reading any further.

The experts say it takes a couple of hours once you fall asleep to reach R.E.M. sleep, the place where you dream. I say, it's not true for everyone. It's especially not true for me. I am able to fall into a deep sleep very quickly, especially in the morning when I don't want to get out of bed and go to work. This morning was a perfect example of that.

My alarm is set to go off at 5:30AM. My snooze button on my alarm clock is set for 9 minute intervals. After 54 minutes (6 snooze cycles for those of you weak in math), it no longer goes off. So I know that by 6:24 I MUST get up, or my alarm will not go off again and I will be severely late for work. Last night I was up too late, reading emails, reading a book that's taking me longer to read than I had thought when I checked it out from the library, and generally just not going to bed at a decent time. That led me to REALLY not wanting to get out of bed this morning.

After hitting snooze six times, and looking at the clock at 6:24, knowing I needed to get up, I closed my eyes and went directly back to sleep. A sleep so deep I started dreaming. The experts also say your dreams only last a few seconds, even though in the dream it feels like a long time. I'm no expert, so I have no idea how long before I started dreaming, but I know that I was dreaming when I suddenly awoke at 7:02. (Last chance to empty your bladder.)

I was driving a car down a residential street, with a couple cars parked in the street on each side, leaving just enough room for one car at a time to drive down parts of the street. Ahead of me, a car turned onto the street and pulled over to let me by, so it could then proceed down the direction I had just come. The weather was clear, although I have no idea if it was sunny, just that it wasn't raining or snowing or dark out. I came to an intersection where I could turn either left or right. I started to turn left, as that was the direction I needed to go, when suddenly, there was 6 to 8 inches of snow on the street which had not been plowed, and cars had been driving through it leaving only tire tracks. Believe it or not, that wasn't even what startled me the most. Ahead of me, blocking the road that I needed to go down, was a chain-link fence with a closed gate. I stopped, which upon retrospect, surprises me that I didn't slide around, as suddenly as I would have stopped had I seen something like that in real life. I was going to turn around, and as I glanced in my rear view mirror, I noticed the road behind me (if I had turned right instead) was also blocked by a chain link fence and gate. I thought to myself that I should just turn around and find another way.

As I started to turn around, a pickup truck pulled up next to me, with a woman driving it. On top of the pickup truck was one of those camper cab things, most of you know what I'm talking about, lol. Anyway, somehow...in that camper part, in the front, the part that sits on top of the cab of the truck, was a man, with a window looking out. So he was directly above the woman driving the pickup. I never saw the woman's face, but the man looked over at me and motioned that they were going to bust through the gate. As they passed me by, and I considered their sanity, I glanced back down the road I had turned off of, and would you believe there was now a fence and gate across that road too. So unless this pickup truck did what he said they were going to do, I was now stuck in this one block section with no way out.

I watched as the pickup truck rammed the gate and busted it wide open. I followed them through, and as soon as I was through the gate, the snow was gone, it was a perfectly clear day again. At this point, the road split in three, straight ahead, to the left, or to the right. I needed to go straight, through the town (small town that it was), to get to my destination which apparently was a customer's of mine. Next I hear a CB radio, which magically appeared in my car, and I heard the man from the pickup say he was going to try to find out why they closed the gates. Not 30 seconds later, he says over the CB, "I found it, there's a beam in the road here. I'll stay here and make sure no one runs into it until it can be moved." A steel beam. I guess the fences and gates were supposed to be used if they ever needed to isolate any part of the town to protect the people and prevent injuries, etc. I continued my drive down the main road through town.

Next thing I know, I'm not in my car anymore, I'm on a bicycle. And I'm not going through this town, I'm riding the bike through a shopping mall. I turn into a jewelry store, circle it, come right back out and stop, confused. I think to myself, because somehow I know I've biked through this mall before, that there must be a way out, but I'm at a dead end.

Then I woke up, saw it was 7:02, and got my butt in gear to get to work, albeit a little later than usual, lol.

Raise your hand if you peed your pants laughing while reading that.