Dream - Working as a policeman, mistaken for a black woman, and the pie-slice shaped books that I took without paying

On Friday morning, September 12, 2008, I dreamed I drove to Fallon, Nevada, and parked on a dirt lot in front of apartments where I was or had been staying (in the dream), more in the area of the first place I had stayed in real life rather than the second. A woman joined me and kept part of her stuff in the vehicle I was driving. It might have been a car at first, but later it was more of a little pickup with a camper shell or maybe a small station wagon, though it just seemed to have two doors. I seemed to be sleeping in it, at least part of the time, maybe laying down in the back. She slept in it too, at least sometimes, sleeping in the passenger seat sitting up. She also had a dog of some kind, something like a cocker spaniel or a little larger. She seemed to have to wait for me for some reason, I'm not sure why now, maybe I had to unlock the entrance to the apartments for her, maybe she just wanted to check in with me, but it seems like something more.

Then I somehow got a temporary job as a policeman. Someone who was a policeman wanted me to do it. I think it was only part time at first, but then it changed to full time. I was a little uncertain about it. I'm not sure my normal boss was even told about it, it might have gone through higher channels. I would walk around town on foot, normally with another policeman, the one who wanted me I think. Sometimes another policeman or two were there also.

There was some kind of a problem with crumbling concrete or cement. They were massive blocky supports for something, though in some cases there may only have been a partial structure above them, like a small overhang. In some cases the concrete may have been part of a building, maybe a corner. The concrete, looking like stucco, crumbled like dried mud when poked at. I was showing someone who I think was supposed to be a detective. He looked like the Range Manager at a place I used to work, a medium size man with reddish hair and a mustache. He poked at the concrete too when I showed him. In some ways he was a little in his actions like Captain Stottlemeyer on the "Monk" TV show. We were near and at a corner where a shopping area started a little beyond.

At a bookstore in the shopping center, I took two copies of a sequel, a collection of very short anecdotes and advice and recipes. The books were triangular, like wide pie slices. At first I think they were hardcover with slipcovers, but later they were softcover. I simply took the books without paying. They were sitting outside with others on a table and I just swooped through going from south to north, looking at them briefly and then taking them with me. I thought at first that it was okay because I had the earlier book in the series, but later I started to worry about it. I thought that I probably wasn't entitled to them after all and worried about getting them back somehow, maybe just walking in and dropping them off and walking out. I continued carrying them around. I walked out and back down the street, going east, and then turned right at another street going south, gradually circling back toward the shopping center.

Halfway along I met some black women who were visiting from somewhere else. They were fascinated by me and almost acted like they knew me. I was partially disguised as someone else and as they talked I was slowly changing, becoming more disguised, finally seeming to be a black woman, though I think they thought I was from the beginning. (Normally I am a white man.)

I finally managed to leave them and continued walking, turning right at the next road and going west. I turned right again, then, onto the road that headed back toward the shopping center.

Reaching the shopping center, I went through a small eating place and picked up a very small double or triple sundae. I don't think it had bananas. It was in an elongated paper cup type thing with a stiff paper wrapped around it. I was holding it in one hand and the books in the other. I worried about getting ice cream on my fingers and then on the books. I was eating the ice cream by sticking my mouth down on it. I finally wandered off and left the shopping center again. In some ways the area seemed a little like the area in part of Reno.

I wandered way back toward not too far from where I was staying and was sitting at a small rectangular table near the sidewalk. I was on the other side of the main road, which went east and west, and the small neighborhood road cross-street was a little to the north. I was with one or two other people.

The visiting black woman and her friends came by, then. They still thought I was a black woman. She sat down and happily talked to me, but she seemed increasingly upset about the books. I'm not sure why. She kept looking at them. They were stacked upside down and nothing was printed on the bottom. She may have wanted one or she may have wanted a look at one. She finally got up and left, looking very upset.

I left shortly afterward, and walked back toward the shopping center and the bookstore to try to give the books back. The books were starting to look less new after all the carrying around. I thought about trying to get someone else to do it for me, maybe the detective.

I changed to stealth mode, where people simply didn't pay attention to me, and I became or was represented as not much more than a pair of dark shoes surrounded by a round shadow, though in reality I may have simply been there but unnoticeable. I was going through a downtown area, crossing streets, trying to stay out of the way of people and cars.


A couple of months or so previously, in July 2008, I had another dream where I took books from a bookstore without paying.