Something Feels Strange…

As I fade away, the last thing I hear is Mom exclaiming, “We forgot to get some sleepwear!”

“And a swimsuit,” Laurie adds.

I hope that whatever they get won’t be too racy!

“And makeup,” Marla interjects from a distance.

Chapter 4: Familiar Territory

“… sunny and warm today when the sun finally gets up at 6:13 this morning. We can expect a high temperature of 76 degrees later in the day. Currently it's a cool 58 degrees in the valley. And in today’s news…”

My radio alarm clock bursts into life. I reach over and shut it off. Peering through the darkness I see that it's 5:30 AM. As I recall it's also Saturday morning. Believe it or not, this is sleeping in for me. On the week days I'm usually up by five o'clock so that I can get in a good run before school. I'm a little bit obsessive about running–if you haven't figured that out yet.

Most teens will sleep the day away when they can but I suppose I'm not like most teens. Normally I like to hit the road by 6 o'clock for my long run on the weekend. During the week I start at 5:30 AM (with reflective gear and a flashing light) so that I can run with minimal interaction with crazy motorists. This morning, however, I'm feeling unusually tired–as if I didn’t sleep all night.

Wait a minute. I had a really strange dream about being up all night.

Suddenly panic sets in as parts of the dream comes flooding into my head. I leap from my bed–all thoughts of sleep instantly gone–knocking over my nightstand with a crash in the process.

Before turning on the light I quickly do a manual inspection of my body feeling for anything out of place or missing. With relief I find that everything feels normal: no stray breasts, no missing parts between my legs and my butt is the same shape as yesterday.

It takes a few minutes for me to get my heart and breathing under control. I've broken into a heavy sweat and I haven’t even started my warm ups yet.

I turn on my light and straightening up my nightstand and find all is as it should be. The feeling of relief is incredible. I'm very happy to be back in familiar territory.

Finding my way down the hall to the bathroom, I take care of lightening my bladder and cleaning my teeth. Looking in the mirror I see the same old me. No surprises this morning. It feels good to have short hair. It's also good to see that my hair is dark, as it should be, instead of blonde. Everyone in our family has dark hair.

It looks as if today might be a shaving day too. That is my face will need to be shaved today–in case you were curious. I'll take care of that after the run.

"It's good to see you this morning," I say to the image in the mirror. My voice is back to normal as well. A full octave lower than last night's dream. Though I did like the feminine sound of the voice in my dream my normal–male–voice is infinitely more desirable in my natural body.  My voice has really deepened over the last year or so and I like it that way.

Back in my room I peel off the Sponge Bob pajamas and pull on a jock-strap, some running shorts and a T-shirt. I find some clean socks, grab my shoes and head for the front lawn. After putting on my footwear I go through my warm up and stretching routine as the sun starts to lighten the sky with the first hint of dawn. All is as it should be. The thought makes me smile.

Once I hit the road I spend the first couple of miles getting warmed up and into my stride. I've been doing this for a couple of years now so it doesn’t take me long to get into the runner’s high. Endorphins are the best drugs in the world and I'm a hopeless addict.

As I settle into my pace I go on autopilot and enter meditation mode. This is the best time of day: there's no one to bother me except for the occasional murderous driver. This is the time that I use to put the world in order in my mind. This is the time where I can make sense of life's challenges without interruption. This is how I mentally survive being a teenager.

The agenda today? The last twenty four hours have provided more than enough subject material. Well, let’s see. As I review my life I settle on four topics for this morning's meditation: Laurie's baffling disappearance, how to deal with the impacts on our relationship of my upcoming departure to work the summer at a boy scout camp in the mountains, next week's final exams, and last–and definitely not the least–is to come to grips with last night's very realistic dream. 

Laurie’s disappearance yesterday is disturbing. She didn’t answer her cell phone, text messages, emails or anything. No one answered at her house yesterday either. It seemed that the phone was off the hook. No one at school–even her best girl friends–knew where she was. I'd stopped by her home after school but it appeared that no one was there. I may just pass her house while running so I can see if her mother’s Subaru is there. She didn’t mention anything about going anywhere when we had our study date on Thursday evening at the public library. This is so unlike her. Laurie is an only child of a widowed mother, so there are no siblings to seek out for information either. I hope that nothing bad has happened.

My meditative state is broken by one of those drivers who seem to disregard everything but themselves. Fortunately–from long experience–I hear the threat coming. The idiot is coming up behind me and turns right in front of me into a side street. Obviously he thinks he can get there before me and I have to slow down to avoid being run over as he makes the turn in his silver Lexus SUV. I slap his tailgate as he goes by. Idiot!

After fuming for a few minutes I return to contemplative mode.

As far as the summer camp goes, Laurie has been upset with my decision to do this since I first signed on.  I have to leave a week from tomorrow, so I don't have much time to find a way to make her understand and get on board with the decision. She was looking forward to a summer of hanging out together and, frankly, so was I but this is a great opportunity to get some good work experience.  It'll also look great on college and scholarship applications. This is Laurie’s last summer as a high school student. She will be a senior next year. I'll be a junior though I'm ahead in credits. I hope to graduate a semester early and join her at college midway through her Freshman year. Anyway, it's time for me to start preparing my resume for college and this is a great opportunity. Working at camp ought to be fun in addition to being a valuable work experience. Regardless of all the good reasons, she's not at all happy about the separation. I hope that it doesn’t end our relationship. It is, however, something that I must do. I'm a little apprehensive that the separation might be too long and she will fall for someone else while I'm gone. I think our relationship is solid enough to survive the summer, but you never know. A couple of other–older–guys have shown an interest in her lately.  She doesn't have to worry about me as it's not likely that I'll find another girlfriend in a Boy Scout camp.

What is strange about the job is that my parents were a more than a little hesitant about the camp job. That surprised me–a lot.  They have always encouraged me to stretch myself through the scouting program.  Great leadership training, they say.  Lately though, they seem to have dropped all objections to my absence this summer.  Indeed, they are enthusiastically supporting it.  Almost to the point where I'm starting to think that they are looking forward to sending me out the door. 

Next on my contemplation list are final exams: the bane of every high schooler's life–or so my classmates say. I hear that they are even 'worse' for college students. At least that is what Tiff tells me. Personally, I kind of like the exams.  They are great opportunities to show what I know, after all I've worked hard to learn all this stuff.  It's fun to show off.  Like I said, I'm not your typical teenager.

So far I've solid As going in my band, PE, pre-calculus, physics, and computer programming classes.  I'm feeling good about my technical writing class also, but not quite so strong as in the others.  The history grade, however, is highly dependent on a good exam performance. I'm going to have to work hard on that one. Fortunately, history is Laurie's strong subject and she has agreed to help me prepare for the exam. I'm hoping that she surfaces today so that we can get together to work on it this afternoon.

Finally, I'm still rattled by last night's dream/nightmare. It seemed so real–and unsettling in so many ways. It looks as if the dream will occupy the majority of my meditation time during my run today. Being Saturday this was a long run of sixteen miles and ought to take a little over two hours since I'm not ready to start pushing it hard yet. Strangely I'm feeling quite sluggish today despite the endorphins.

As I recalled the details of the dream, I start trying to identify what was so disturbing about it. Was it being drafted into the female ranks?  Maybe it was having to wear all those female clothes? Or how my sister revealed her suppressed hostility? Or how Laurie seemed to abandon our boyfriend/girlfriend relationship so easily? Or was it being ganged up on by four women who seemed to know everything but were unwilling to tell me? I just hate being the only one not to get the punch line of a joke or story, though I'm used to secretive, 'need-to-know', people and situations.

I live in a California town with a huge government laboratory.  It is one of the major employers in the area and rumor has it that work there covers just about everything from nuclear physics to bioengineering and chemical systems of all types.  No one really know for sure what goes on out there except those who work there and they are not talking.  They certainly have enough people at the Lab to do a wide variety of things.  In fact, both of my parents work there; Dad has a Ph.D. in physics and works directly for the laboratory and the company that Mom works for has a standing contract with the Lab, but unrelated to whatever it is that Dad does.  Like all the other employees at the laboratory, they deflect the conversation to other topics whenever someone asks about the details of what they do out there.  After awhile you just kinda get used to the lack of answers.  Like in the dream last night.

All those issues are unsettling, but actually, I think what probably bothered me the most was that some pretty major life rules had changed for me for a short time. I really hate it when someone changes the rules.

The rules that I'd been taught about the relations of the sexes are pretty strong. And they have always made sense to me. Girls are girls and boys are boys. Certain expectations are made of each gender and I've been happy with that. Those expectations change with time and society, I suppose, and we get to choose how we meet those expectations. However we don’t have any choice in our birth sex. I'm happy that my birth sex has never been a problem for me. I've never spent any time seriously contemplating gender identity issues because I haven't felt the need. Like everyone else I know people for whom gender identity and sexual orientation are real issues but I've not been one of them. Several of my acquaintances over the years have struggled with gender identity and the conflict has not looked like fun. I'm grateful to not have that complication thrown on top of everything else going on in my life. To me gender identity and sexual orientation are a private matters that don't define a person as good or bad. Unfortunately not everyone seems to feel that way. Hey, we're all different in some way.

As far as gender rules and roles are concerned, it seems that many of them are in place to encourage people to be respectful of each other and to account for the obvious emotional and physical differences between the sexes. It would seem that things go better when there's mutual respect and allowance for individual preferences. 

One of the strongest rules that I've learned relates to a person's sense of privacy. I like my privacy and it only seems fair to grant that right to others. The privacy that has been most sacred to the women in my life has been related to their personal intimacy. I guess the same goes for me and most guys as well. I doubt that I would willing walk down the street naked, or even through our living room if any females were there. I don’t, however, have any problem walking through a locker room full of naked guys–I've been doing that ever since I was a small kid so it's no big deal.

Give me even a peek at an naked or scantily clad woman, however, and all sorts of uncomfortable things happen in my mind, as you might have noticed. This discomfort may be due to trauma in my youth.  I've always been aware of the need to respect the privacy of my sisters, but when I was about 10 yrs old, I wandered into Tiff’s room once when she was wearing only her underwear. Mom had to rescue me before Tiff beat me to a pulp. That day I got a long lecture about respecting the privacy of others, in particularly that of my sisters and women in general. Since then, I've been absolutely scrupulous about giving my sisters and other females their space and respecting their privacy. They have done the same for me. Things work well that way.

To suddenly be on their ‘team’ and to be fully exposed to their intimate details without any consequences was unsettling. I never expected to feel a real breast or fondle a vagina until my marriage night. If last night was a real experience, then I can check off the breast feeling from my list of things to do but I'm still totally ignorant about the vagina. The breast feeling wasn’t exploratory either so maybe I can’t count that.

The other thing that bothers me is that I didn’t seem too disturbed by the clothing during the shopping session.  Once I got over the initial shock it wasn't so bad.  Just a couple of hiccups when faced with the skirt and pantyhose.  And in both those cases it wasn't the clothing in particular but the act of dressing that was the problem since my hands violated sacred female body parts and my eyes were exposed to things that young boys don't really need to be seeing. What does that say about my sexuality? In fact, when my anxiety levels had dropped below survival mode and in the few times the women gave some me some breathing room I found the sensations were intriguing. Given more time I would've liked to explore those feelings.

In reflection I found the overall experience interesting in a non-sexual way. If I hadn't been so panicked about my personal safety or breaking solemn rules of privacy maybe I could have focused more on the experience and learned more about what it's like to be a woman.  That could have been useful. Well the opportunity is lost if it was ever even really there.

I once heard on a radio talk show that most people are fairly neutral about their sexuality with the average man being offset a little to one side of the center of the sexuality spectrum and the average woman being offset just a little to the other side. The distribution of male and female sexuality tends to overlap in the center with individuals whose personalities are such that they would be happy regardless of the sex they end up as. There are others that tend to the extremes with real manly men/girly girls who would panic if they changed sex and the girly men/manly women who long to change sex, but they are the outliers. Most people are happy with the gender cards that they have been dealt. Since only looking at a woman's exposed anatomy bothers me in the context of the rules that I've learned and not the wearing of their clothes or accessories, maybe I'm one of those gender neutral personalities that could be happy being either sex. That is an interesting thought but I don't see any way to verify it.

Sure, I like a lot of things about being a guy–I listed them earlier. Besides the fact that I don’t really understand them all that well, women generally appear to be happy as women. Maybe it's because I've spent all my life around a houseful of females, but I like to do some of the things they do as well as the normal guy things. I suspect that if I'd been born female I would've been content with that role just as I'm now content with the male role.

What would happen if I suddenly changed ‘teams’ like last night? Could I adapt to that once I got over the change in uniform and the change in rules? That sort of thing doesn’t happen so I guess that I'll never know so it's not worth spending too much time on.  Regardless, it's an intriguing thought.

All this thinking was getting deeper than I care to go. I need more information if I'm to get much further with this line of thought. I am broken out of deep thought anyway by another maniac behind the wheel. This one–a young woman in a red Mazada Miata sports car–also tries to take me out on a cross street like the Lexus did earlier. She almost succeeds! I must have really been into deep thought because I didn't even see her coming.  I did stop in time to let her pass. Again, I'm used to this kind of abuse from drivers so it doesn't disturb me too much. It happens almost every day.

I chastise myself for not being more observant and return to meditation mode.

Laurie’s reaction to the whole sex swap thing bothers me too. After all, I thought that she liked having me for a boyfriend. Why was she apparently nonchalant that I switched teams? She seemed to like having me as another of her good girl friends as much as I thought that she liked me as her boyfriend. I would've expected her to show a sense of loss but there was none of that in the dream.

As I think about this new twist, I find the new thought even more disturbing than the change of rules. It seems that she might not have the same hopes as I do regarding our long term relationship. That idea hurts a lot. Could she be mad at me for leaving this summer? I don't know.

People keep telling us that since we're still teenagers the odds are heavily weighted against our romantic relationship lasting forever. Almost every adult that I know has shared with us stories of their first loves and the heartache associated with the dissolution of those relationships. One of my scout leaders even estimates that 95% of all teenage romances end in heartbreak. He counsels us all to avoid developing too close of relations with girls until we're 'old enough to handle it.'  Those aren't very good odds. If last night's dream was reality then it could mean that she has either been deceiving me about her affections or that she will be the first to move on from our relationship in the natural progression of life. Good thing it was only a dream.  I really hope that it was only a dream. I  have been hoping that we can beat the odds. Nevertheless I think that I must talk with her to see where we stand and where we're going. I ought to do this before leaving for camp.

So... was it a dream or reality?

I've heard that you don’t learn new things in a dream. Dreams only work from things already in present your mind. I’m pretty sure that I learned a lot about female attire that I never knew before–even after spending my life with a mother and two sisters. I also learned a thing or two about my sister that I didn't know before–that is if the dream was reality. I never would've guessed that she felt put upon by me and other men.  I wonder where that came from?  I guess that she did give me a few clues.

It's also true that dreams often don't make sense. Bizarre things have happened often in my past dreams. Last night was certainly bizarre in many ways but also perfectly plausible in others. For example, how can you magically appear somewhere with a total sex change? How could we have exclusive use of a big store for most of the night? Like I said: Bizarre. But then again, all the shopping with the ladies was possible–it certainly FELT real–both the clothes and the panic. There was none of that strange morphing of scenes and shapes that often happens in dreams as they progress. Things just aren’t computing well.

These thoughts continue to distract me while I run. I hardly notice where I am until I find myself passing Laurie’s house. It was good to see her mother’s little Subaru Outback parked in the driveway. I’ll have to check in with the Mercers later this morning.

Before I know it I'm on the home stretch. It was a good run even though I'm feeling sluggish. I missed most of the landscape and physical exertion due to all the heavy thinking. Unfortunately, even after a two hour meditation, I've yet to come to any real conclusions.

It's eight thirty by the time I'm done with my warm down and enter the house. Dad is sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen reading the morning paper. He looks tired.

“Mornin' son,” he greets me. "How was your run?"

"It went well, thanks," I respond.  "Only a couple of near death experiences this time"

"At least you survived them," he says without concern.  He has heard all about them before. “You have any plans for the day?”

“I'm hoping the meet up with Laurie a little later," I respond. "I need her help studying for my history final exam.”

“Too bad, I was looking for someone that wanted to go for a hike this afternoon," he says. "I need to get some fresh air and exercise.  Maybe I can get your mother to go, if she ever gets up this morning.”

It seems strange that Mom is still in bed. She's usually up before Dad and my sisters. Marla on the other hand, probably won’t pop out of her room until she has to get ready for her afternoon shift at the store. That is her standard operating procedure.

“Good luck getting mom to go, Dad," I say. "I'd like to spend an afternoon with you before I head out for camp.  How about next Saturday?"

"Maybe. I might have to leave town tonight and I don't know when I'll be back," he replies. "I hope to be back for Marla's graduation on Thursday. I'd like to spend the afternoon with you. I'm going to miss having you around this summer. I think that there will be shortage of 'guy' time around here this year with you gone."

"I'll certainly get enough guy time this summer," I laugh. "We'll work something out before I go. Right now I think I’ll get in the shower while I can. Oh, by the way, is Mom a good dancer?”

“What? Sure. I think she is. She used to be. We haven’t been to a dance in ages. Why do you ask?”  He responds with a questioning look.

“Oh I had this weird dream last night. She seemed a pro at sidestepping and dancing around questions that she doesn’t want to answer,” I said.

“Well she's good at that but I’m not sure how that relates to dancing.” He said.

“Oh well… it's nothing–just an odd thought that passed through my mind,” I say as I head for the shower.

After shaving (my face–I do it a couple of times a week now) and taking a shower I throw on some jeans and a T-shirt and grab my cell phone out of my book pack while heading to the kitchen to scrounge up some breakfast. I notice that there's a text message from Laurie. It reads “Sry abt ystrdy. Libry at 1? Lv L”

So she surfaces! The strange thing is that this message was sent at 4:12 AM. Laurie is never up that early. Maybe she was just going to bed? I try calling her cell but it's apparently off as it instantly reverts to voice mail. She likes text messages better than voice mail so I send her one back: “Libry at 1! Lv C”

Dad is still at the breakfast table doing some paperwork. As I fix my bowl of cereal he asks if I'm going to have another semester of straight A’s. We chat about the history exam challenge for a while. Being a scientist he has mixed feelings about history in general and tries to persuade me that it's valuable to know about the events that shaped our society. It's a hard sell as I don't see what impact most of this stuff has on my plans.

“Dad, why is Mom still in bed? Is she sick?” I ask.

“No, apparently Jennifer Mercer had some kind of family crisis,” He says. “Your mother went over to help out last night. I guess that she got in late. I was asleep when she got home. I figured that you would know about it since you and are Laurie are such good friends.”

Our mothers have become good friends since we started dating. Laurie and I figure that it's a plot to keep tabs on us. It's hard to get into too much trouble when your mothers are comparing notes on a daily basis.

“No… Laurie dropped off the map yesterday. I wasn’t able to get a hold of her at all,” I mentioned. “Was Marla out last night? I don’t remember her taking off before I went to bed.”

“You went to bed pretty early last night," he pointed out. "Marla left with some of her girl friends to a late movie I think. She wasn’t home yet when I fell asleep on the couch around eleven o'clock. It was a pretty quiet night around here.”

“Must have been pretty boring,” I observe.

“It was. There wasn't much on TV either.  I spent some time reading technical journals. You know, I miss the days when you weren’t distracted by that young lady. We used to have some good times at the spur of the moment. I suppose that it just part of your growing up.  You know, I like her even though I have to compete with her for your attention. She's a pretty special girl. Just be nice to her.” He admonishes me.

“Sure, Dad, I like her to. We're good friends,” I assure him.

The rest of the morning is spent taking care of a few chores and visiting with Dad. He's a pretty good guy for an adult and he's much more laid back than Mom. Mom gets pretty intense sometimes, particular when she's focused on some project. Which is just about always. Her behavior in my dream last night was pretty typical for her.

Marla came crashing through the kitchen with barely enough time to grab a banana before heading off for work. After last night's revelations, I figured that I ought to be nice to her and see what happens. To this end, I have a sandwich, a banana, and a yogurt in a bag ready for her when she comes blasting through. She gets a shocked expression on her face when I hand her my creation. She stares at me for a couple of seconds before saying "Thanks" with a confused look on her face. I just smile at her. She isn't sure of what to make of this act of kindness. She gives me a little hug before looking at me closely again and heading out the door. Strange.

Mom rolled out into the family public space just as I was leaving for the library. After having fun shaking up Marla I thought it would be fun to mess with Mom's mind a little so I gave her a hug and a "I love you" before heading out the door. She was speechless.

The library is only a mile from the house so I walked to it for my study date with Laurie.

We have our special corner where we study. It's out of the way and we can talk quietly without disturbing anybody else. She's already there when I arrive. She looks bright and perky as usual and gives me a welcoming kiss. I like studying with her.

“Hey, beautiful, where were you yesterday?” I ask.

“Oh… sorry about that, but we had a family emergency pop up unexpectedly. My mother’s sister–Aunt Polly–called from Alaska. Apparently my uncle was injured in a military training accident. His helicopter went down on a glacier in some remote location and they couldn’t find him all day. Aunt Polly was a wreck. We spent hours talking with her on her cell phone as she waited for updates on the search. They finally found him late in the evening. He was injured pretty bad and will be laid up for a while. He was still unconscious when they brought him in. The doctors were afraid that he might be in a deep coma. Fortunately he came out of it somewhere around one this morning. He definitely is suffering from hypothermia. His injures are bad enough that he will be in the hospital for at least a couple of weeks. We spent hours on the phone and computer helping her take care of her affairs. Fortunately the poor woman is pretty capable with finances and stuff since Uncle Bill has been deployed a lot. Now that he's laid up she feels the need to stay with him and advocate for him in the medical system.  There's just too much to do and she doesn’t know how she'll get it all done. I think that she's going to need a lot of help taking care of things. To top things off my cousin Kristina is not helping out at all.  In fact, she's a project all by herself. She has been getting into trouble at school and has developed quite an attitude from what we hear. Your mother came over to lend moral support after you went to bed. We were up pretty late.”

"So," I ask, "Are you guys all right? I tried stopping by your house yesterday and no one answered the door."

“I received your messages,” she says, ”but didn’t want to leave Mom alone for even a minute to respond. Sorry! We did go out for a while to send some document by FedEx to my Aunt. That took some time. You must have stopped by when we were gone.”

“I was worried,” I said. “Yesterday was the first day all year that we haven’t spent time together but it sounds as if you had a decent excuse. I figured that it must be serious for you to drop off the map like that. Nobody knew what happened to you. Shouldn't you be supporting your mother and family again today?"

"No need," she replies. "There's not much for me to do to help today, plus I must make up for the lost day at school... and with you.  Also, I need your help preparing for my math final. Mom's busy today trying to arrange things so that she can go up to help. Unfortunately, she's not sure that she can get the time off work."  She smiles and adds, "Plus she doesn't want me to be left unsupervised with you around." That is followed by another kiss.

"You know that my mother is a good enough chaperone for a dozen kids. Leaving you behind with me shouldn't be a problem," I laugh. "What is going to happen with your relatives?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think that Mom is considering inviting cousin Kris to stay with us this summer so that Aunt Polly can focus on getting Uncle Bill through this challenge. Since you're abandoning me this summer” she quips, “I need to have another Kris in my life.”

“Is this Kris such a handful?” I ask.

“Not normally," she replies. "She's pretty bright and is ahead in school. We think that she just got hooked up with the wrong crowd in the past few months. It's hoped that a separation will help her to see the error of her ways. We have the room here and it'll fun having another girl around the house. Mom and Aunt Polly also seem to think that Kris needs to have a supervised away-from-home experience along with some work experience.  If she comes we'll have to help her find a job. Mom will make sure that the girl is kept busy and out of trouble. That means that I'll have to be busy too. Mom wants me to get a job this summer."

“There are worse things that work," I point out. "Such as being bored to death. How old is this wayward child?”

“Actually she's essentially your age. In fact I think that she was born the same month as you. Maybe it's a good thing that you'll be gone. That way she can’t steal you away from me!” She smiles then gives me another, more passionate, kiss.

Turning the tables she asks about my day yesterday. I fill her in a bit, but don't mention the dream.  If it was really just a dream it would be embarrassing to talk about it.

“How about making up for yesterday by going to the early movie with me tonight after we study? We can get some pizza for dinner too," I suggest. "I won't be able to stay out late tonight as I didn't sleep too well last night. I'll need to get my 'beauty' sleep tonight.”

She looks at me strangely but exclaims “I would love that!”

She continues, "I was up late last night too, so I suspect that an early night will do both of us good. What kept you up?"

"Actually, I think that I slept all night. It's just that I had this realistic dream that really wore me out." I said

"Oh? What was the dream?" She asks with great interest.

"Nothing much," I hedge. "It was just weird and I can't make any sense of it. It's hard to explain. Lots of nonsense." Make that I don't want to explain it.

I can tell that she wants to talk about it, but decides not to. "Dreams are that way. Most of them make no sense at all," she says, letting the subject drop.

I guess it must have been a dream last night after all. Judging from all the kisses I've collected so far, it sure looks as if she really likes me as a boyfriend. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that maybe it wasn’t a dream. But how could that be? Such things as complete sex changes just don’t happen–particularly twice in the same night.

Yeah... I'm now pretty sure that last night's experience was a dream. I suspect that Marla, Mom, or Laurie would've spilled the beans somehow if it hadn't been.

I feel somewhat relieved to have arrived at this conclusion. I like things orderly and a shake up like that which happened in the dream would've seriously messed with my sense of order. Although, somewhere back up in Brain Central there's an unexplained thought that it would be interesting to give the sex swap a whirl for a while. Fortunately, it is only a passing thought. Anyway, this is not the time to dwell on the dream and its ramifications. There's work to be done.

We spend the afternoon helping each other prepare for next week's final exams. Dreams and crazy drivers are long forgotten as the afternoon progresses. It's just great to be together and we both enjoy the afternoon.

After checking in with the parental units, we borrow my dad's car and go out for pizza and then to the multiplex for a movie. Laurie wants to see the latest romantic comedy which is fine by me because those movies usually translate into warm fuzzy feelings which–in turn–result in a lot more snuggling and kisses at the theatre and on the way home.

As we say good night at her house I notice that she's wearing a new necklace. I don't know why I hadn't noticed it earlier. I guess that I'm not all that observant at times. Anyway the necklace looks disturbingly familiar. Hanging from a delicate gold chain around her neck is a gold colored charm in the shape of a running shoe.

As I look at it closely she says, “It reminds me of you,”

and winks at me before heading inside.