I was on a football pitch, playing in a match, on the left side of the field.  I didn’t recognize all of the other players, but I think one of them was Zidane.  I thought it may have been Real Madrid, but I don’t think the uniform colors were appropriate, as I remember seeing some red & blue combination, so it wasn’t immediately clear whether it was at the professional level or something else.  Then there were some game-play sequences.  A guy made a ‘square’ (90-degree to the sideline, across rather than up/down the pitch) pass to me, but it was behind me, so I couldn’t stop my forward momentum and get back to it in time before it went out of bounds.  He and I both made that brief ‘awww…’ sigh of mild disappointment that the idea didn’t come-off as hoped.  Then there was another pass which appeared intended for me– crisply hit, but somewhat too far out front, so I couldn’t quite reach it. Fortunately, however, I discovered another teammate standing in the ball’s path, so he collected it which prevented it going out.  Play continued.  That guy tried to hit me with a short pass– it was a bit under-hit, requiring me to hustle to close the distance.  My legs felt a little sluggish, but I got there before the defender and managed to get a touch on it which directed it to another teammate standing close by.  I continued my run around the right side of the pitch, and the ball was worked up toward the attacking third.  I stayed more on the right side, like a defensive midfielder might do.  The other team got a counterattack, and I sprinted back to defend.  The keeper may have come out– I can’t remember exactly but I recall it had become dark, and I was able to get my foot in for a decisive block on the opponent’s shot.

Then there was a transition to being in an Asian restaurant that was familiar, like a place I had been several times before for deliveries.  On this occasion, I was waiting in the lobby for a pick-up, but then was invited to sit at the counter on the other side of a partition between the lobby and seating area.  I sat there for a moment, then they started giving me samples of stuff out of the kitchen to try.  All of it was seafood.  I expressed gratitude and was expressive in my liking of the food.  A couple things I remember particularly were 1) a small white dish with a few marinated flakes of salmon, and 2) a full entrée of something that was housed in a hand-sized black cup-shaped, natural object, kind of like a piece of carved coral.  It seemed exotic; I didn’t really know whether there was a proper way to eat from it, so I turned to a girl next to me who perhaps worked there, and asked if it was part of the meal– is it urchin?  I’m not sure what she said but I used a fork to get some of the meat out of it, which seemed like a cross between seafood meat and a black oyster mushroom. Then 3) there was a massive salmon steak about the size of an entire dinner plate, several inches thick.  I used a big chef’s knife to separate the meat from the skin, like if it had perhaps been raw, but it definitely had been cooked.  I ate some, then suddenly had gotten up and went down a few seats to the right at the counter.  There was  a young cute girl sitting next to me on my left, and her mom was behind the counter, perhaps working in the kitchen.  The daughter seemed to be about 20 years old, and was just enjoying hanging out chatting with me.

She suddenly turned to address her mom and declared that she really wanted to go out with me like it was a date, so she asked for her mom’s permission.  Mom’s response was a bit of a muted ‘okayyy’ like perhaps it was fine to say yes because she knew it couldn’t be taken totally seriously, then turned to me to invite me to respond.  I paused to assess the situation. I looked carefully at the girl to try to measure some of the desire in her, to try to get a sense of what she really wanted so I could respond appropriately.  I wondered whether she was just wanting life experience, or did she think I had something that she thought I could give her, or maybe she had ‘daddy-issues’?  So I studied for a moment, gathered that she just had some innocent longing, and I felt like she was definitely too young.  I asked her how old she was, then she ducked her head slightly, like she was a bit shy or embarrassed.  There was murmur in the background and I heard “15” uttered.  Once I heard that I felt relief because it was so far out of bounds that I didn’t have to actually reject her for any personal reason.  I stood up, walked back to my original seat, and asked more directly, “You’re how old, 15?”  Didn’t get a response, so continued “Well, I think there’s too big of a difference for us, because…” I turned to ask the restaurant staff, “How old do I look?”  They threw out a few ridiculous guesses: “50? 60?”  (WTF?, btw)  I said, “I’m 40,” (actually I’m 39) “So 15 to 40 is just too far apart.”  I went back to eating the huge salmon steak, which suddenly seemed to have been shredded or chopped up a bit.  I thought it seemed a bit strange that I would have been gifted such a huge amount of food, which I assumed was quite expensive.  I wondered whether something was maybe wrong with it, or whether I had perhaps done favors for them in the past that they were reciprocating for– not sure.  It had gone from a few tastes to now all I could eat, and more.

About