I had a really long dream last night, which I only remember a part of. Here’s the part.

I was in a little resort town near a man-made lake. It was actually twin lakes, set at a diagonal angle to each other. One was ‘wild’ and forested, the other was built-up and touristy. Where they met, there was a little strip of land with a hotel, a gift shop, and a row of little food stands that ran for about a mile along the shore of the touristy lake. Everything about the place seemed like a facade. It had been built in the 1980’s, and it showed.

I was there visiting with a small tour group of some sort. There were only four or five of us in the group. We walked single file through a high-walled cement courtyard with those small, circular metal dining tables neatly arranged around the edges.

From there, we walked into the ‘formal’ dining room. It was part dining room and part lounge, because there were sofas with teenage kids lounging around on them, sitting upside down, and sprawled all over the place. Their parents were paying them no attention because they were too busy getting drunk and having their own conversations at other tables nearby.

One of the women in our group was European (not sure from where, though; maybe France?) She and I kept making jokes which I can’t remember, but we were very flirty with each other. She said something to which I responded, “Okay, but that means I’m going to have to carry you piggy-back now.” She laughed and jumped on my back. I carried her all around the restaurant until we were both laughing like hyenas. We came to a part of the room where the kids were sprawled on sofas, and they were leaning out into the aisle. I said, “Excuse us,” and they moved out of the way. It was still a tight squeeze, though, and as we passed the table, the woman I was carrying brushed her foot near to the candle, and her stocking caught fire. I quickly put it out with my hand, but not before one of the parents from the other table had her camera phone out and took a couple of pictures of the crazy guy carrying the crazy lady on his shoulders, with her stocking on fire. She laughed and turned to her family, held her phone aloft, and said, “I got it! I got it!” The woman and I went around to the other side, where I set her down gently and said, “I need to go get something, I’ll be right back.”

I walked upstairs to one of the rooms. I had been at this resort the year before, and I had left a cello behind, so I had come back to retrieve it. I walked into the room I’d stayed in, and decided that it was time to change my clothes. I was down to a T-shirt and nothing else, when a pair of newlyweds walked in the room. I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but they were Puerto Rican. They were surprised to see me, but didn’t pay me much attention as they walked past me to sit by the window. I laughed uncomfortably and said, “Uhhh. . .sorry about this. I’ll just be here for a minute, as soon as I change my clothes.” So I did that, but after I had put my pants on, I realized that I had put everything on inside out. Underwear and all. So I had to take it all back off, pull it right-side-out, and then put it all on again. While I was doing that, I looked over at the couple, who were entranced by a wedding video. It was a What-To-Expect-From-Being-Married video, also in 1980’s style–with bullet points and everything–and I was making a herculean effort not to laugh. At the same time, though, I kept thinking, ‘Well, I guess if they’ve never heard information like that before, at least they’ll get it from somewhere.’

I finally got my clothes on correctly, and said to the couple, “Okay. I’ll be outta here in just a minute, as soon as I get what I came in for.” I opened the closet door, looked inside, and saw the cello there. I pulled it out and held it out for inspection. It wasn’t shaped like a normal cello. While cellos are rounded, this one was all rectangular and ornate. The neck was the thickness of a full-size double bass, and the ‘scroll’ was actually square and overbuilt in the same way that the body of the cello was. I kept looking at it to make sure that it was still in good condition, and the Puerto Rican woman said, “Go on, play us sometheeng!” I pulled the bow out to inspect it too. It too was unlike a normal cello bow. It was square in the same style as the cello, and instead of having a multitude of strands of hair, it had two yellow strings that created the sound. Since it hadn’t been played in so long, it didn’t have any rosin in the bow, so it just made a ‘fsssht fsssht fsssht’ sound as it glided across the strings. The woman said, “Oh, that’s a really nice one. Raimond (her new husband) has one just like that.”

I don’t know how I knew that his name was spelled that way instead of the usual way, but I did, and that’s when I woke up.