A Chilly Run-In with a Famous Witch

This dream should have been posted probably about a month ago. I’ve been planning and planning and planning on writing it, but clearly it never really happened.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Jake’s Bike Store in Roseville had never been so crowded. 

“Really? A line?” I said, knowing that all I had to do was pick up Christie’s bike which we had been waiting forever for and that I couldn’t really try again another day because I was already there which is like five minutes away from campus and who knows if I would ever be able to make the trek from Bethel again and wow what a very runny run-on sentence this is.

And this really was quite a line. Queued in front of the repair desk were about twenty people, each with a different bicycular problem—a bent wheel, broken chain, stuck gears, and one snobby douchebag in a hoity toity cycling suit with who I’m sure said that his expensive bike “just doesn’t feel right.”

I got in line and resentfully masticated the crap out of my chewing gum.  I could totally be considering doing homework back in my dorm right now.

A friend from class, I noticed, was standing about nine people ahead of me. Waving was not an option; she was too far away.  “But wait. Does she have braces?” I thought. “No way! Her teeth were always so straight. I can’t believe it.”  I didn’t realize I was rudely staring until she caught my eye, made a sort of creeped-out look that slid into an excited smile and wave. “She must think that stare was me just being a jokester. Thank god for using humor to get people to like me!”  

And yes, she had, for some reason, braces.

The wait was long, but soon enough I had advanced at least four spots. As I was trying to shake the repeating Ashley Simpson song Pieces of Me out of my head, Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter appeared in front of me. It was really the Maggie Smith version of McGonagall from the movies who was standing there, cloaked and witch-hatted, staring me down.

Shuffling hurriedly toward me, she said in her shrill, properly-English, every-important-word-elongated-and-emphasized-in-a-really-bitchy-way voice, “If you want to be seeeerved, you’re not going to want to be chewing guuuum, aaare you?”

“Of course not, Professor McGonagall,” I said, as I put my gum into her bony, wrinkly, cupped hand.

And then I woke up.