All I want is English cheese

I ate so much last night that I dreamt I wasn't hungry.  Or, I should say, I ate so LATE - it was 130am when I got home from a 20 hour workday.  Taco Bell cooked me dinner and then I passed out.

I dreamt I was at breakfast meeting to plan my best friend's wedding.  We made popcorn soaked in red wine, then set it on a paper towel.  When it was dry we stamped each kernel with "0544N" in tiny white script.

We were ordered onto a huge ferry boat because we were being evacuated from America.  The boat held 5000 refugees.  Attendants dressed in air hostess uniforms were seating everyone individually in reclining leather seats scavenged from the airlines.  Hundreds of rows of seats had been bolted straight to the deck of the boat; the portholes looked like the windows of a giant plane.

A mid-forties black couple entered the cavernous passenger deck; an attendant grabbed the woman's large duffel bag.  The man had no luggage.  The woman sat down at the back left in a row that was nearly empty.  The hostess moved four rows forward, and put the bag down in a seat right next to mine.  "I'm giving you the best seat in the house," she said.

"I want to sit back here," the woman replied.

"The problem with the world today," declared the attendant, "is that people can't tell good quality from bad."

The woman reclined her seat and shook her head.  "This is very comfortable. I want to stay."

The hostess sighed.  "This seat is the ultimate in luxury; it would be senseless to refuse it."

The woman came reluctantly forward, her eyes darting back to the seat she had just vacated.  Just as she sat down, a newcomer claimed her old seat.  The attendant looked smug, and left.

Our row was crowded, with almost no elbow room and when she reclined it, the woman's new seat wouldn't stay put, slowly inching a return to vertical.   There was one advantage to our row: leg room; it was located on a walkway so the next row of seats was ten feet away.

Though I was bone tired, being upright made it hard to relax; I drifted in and out of consciousness, the need for sleep like a physical ache.  Several people to my right got up for lunch and I wanted to stretch out but I had no idea how long my rowmates would be gone. 

I started flirting with the woman who'd been bullied into sitting with me, just to pass the time.  She seemed to welcome the distraction, and gradually, turned into my sister.  "Dad is parking the van in the car deck," she told me.  "We could go down and sleep in there."

"I don't know, " I said.  "Will they let us in?  I thought that after 9/11 access to the car decks was restricted in case people tried to use vehicles as bombs."

Now she had planted that hope, though, I was compelled to explore.  There were stairs leading to a second deck that opened into a long dormitory packed with beds.  Shockingly, about two beds down on the left, my old tiger lamp was nailed to the wall, and under it was the bed I'd slept in as a child.  I even recognized the bedding.

I raced back to my sister and reported what I had seen.  Now she was skeptical.  "How is that possible?"  She suggested it was wishful thinking.

I shook my head.  "No way." I grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the stairs.

Fog filled the cabin.  We walked out onto a cobbled street.  It was cold even in the bright sun, a fine mist swirling in from the English seaside that lay directly to the left.  Down the street, on the right, a sign said, "Olde Cheese Shoppe."  Suddenly I was hungry.

"Maybe Dad's in there," I said.  My heart leapt.  I really needed it to be true.