Dream - Collapsible cars and my mother the pirate

Around November 17, 2007, I had a dream about school, work, devices that could collapse cars to a small size and then restore them, and my mother dressed like a pirate.

In the dream, I was in a school, and had missed most of the second year, with only a few days left. It was a very big, square, low building and I apparently also lived in it. The instructor was going to let me pass anyway by doing a quick catch-up of the work. He was wanting me to do something with a camera, perhaps construct one, but I think I also needed to take some pictures with it. He also wanted me to later make a movie camera, but first he wanted me to thread film into a projector. "You do know how to thread a projector, don't you?" I didn't say anything, though of course I didn't know.

Later, I was driving back and forth to Nevada. I had earlier bought a device, which was apparently shipped to me from the car manufacturer, that could collapse my car to a collection of tiny circuit boards about the size of a small camera, that could be kept in a bag that came with it. The car could later be reconstituted by adding water. It would recreate itself perfectly, to factory specifications, fixing anything that needed fixing, but still have anything extra that I had been keeping in the car. I had been driving the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile, but I also bought a similar device for the 1970 Cadillac. I also later bought, for the Oldsmobile, improved versions of the device, one that was only about a quarter inch thick and one that was absolutely flat, the thickness of a playing card. Initially, I think the cost was 900,000 and something dollars, perhaps 980,000 or 960,000 or 920,000. Later, I bought the improved device (the quarter inch thick one) for 780,000 dollars.

At some point I was going uphill in the dark in the Oldsmobile, up a narrow street with cars parked on one side. Eventually it became too narrow to drive past the parked cars, and I collapsed my car and carried it in the bag. I think I was using the quarter inch thick version of the device at the time. I got to the sidewalk and turned left to go to the entrance of a building. I was very late and had been expected hours before. It was some type of eating place. My father had been waiting in a circular sunken outdoor room to the left of the entrance. He had evidently been sleeping a lot of the time. I joked with the hostess and also with my mother, who had also showed up, perhaps after me. I said that my father would have to give back all his naps and the food he ate when he left. The hostess laughed. I had also a little earlier joked about it with my mother.

Then, I was driving to work in the Nevada desert. My mother was with me and also my grandmother, who had died over twenty years ago. Somehow, then, someone else was driving and I was hugging my grandmother and kissing her, saying how happy I was to see her. I reminded her of the times, long age, when I sometimes stayed at her house. I said that I was going to do it again, but as I was saying it I suddenly felt unsure if I would be able to. She was smiling, but she never said anything. Her gray hair was undone and fell in a long, narrow band most of the way down her back.

We turned onto the entrance road to the place I worked and stopped off the road not far from the gate. Somehow we now had two cars, at least one of which was a rental. I'm not sure any of them had the necessary ID sticker to get past the gate. My mother was carrying something in a bag, perhaps a gun, and also had a very small knife strapped to her leg just above the knee. She had to leave both of them behind before we went to the gate, because weapons weren't allowed. She was now much younger, perhaps around fifty or even in her forties, and was dressed in black leather with leather shorts. She looked almost like a pirate, perhaps even including an eye patch. She unstrapped the tiny knife and I guess put it and the gun in one of the cars.

I was going to let them stay in a low, square building that was an eating place that was a little ways past the gate, to the left. It had large ham sandwiches that I thought they would enjoy. I would be spending most of my time in a long building to the right, working. Originally, the eating place had been a much smaller affair. In real life, no such eating place existed.

Later, we were in the 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon, a car that we sold long ago. My father was driving. We were going back to Arizona. I looked at the hilly, mountainous way we were on and wondered if we were in Arizona already. It seemed to me, though, that we had not left Nevada yet, and I finally decided that we were still there and thought that I might know approximately where we were. My father told me to look at the moon. The sky was very cloudy with light shining through the clouds. I looked in what I thought was the direction he was referring to, where a bright light was shining behind the clouds, behind me and to one side. I said that it was the sun, not the moon, and looked around to try and find where the moon might be. I saw a lesser light to the front, at the left, and decided it must be the moon, and said so.