Dream World

   It had happened again.No garbage pickup. Last week, in that alternate world of reality, no pickup. The containers had been carefully placed as usual on the edge of the driveway.  In the morning, they were pushed back a short distance. Probably from dropping off the robot arm, I assumed. But when I went to bring them back to their customary place, I found them full. I can only think that the overnight wind must have blown them into the driveway a short way, and so the truck simply bypassed them. So much for service, I thought.  I forgot about it, or so I thought, but maybe not because in my world of dreams, the issue recurred:
   This time the containers themselves were missing. We were evidently being refused by our waste removal service. Left on our lawn was a chocolate milk carton,  I didn't know where to put it. I saw our neighbor's garbage receptacle lying on its side, empty, so I walked over and threw the carton sideways into it. Then I thought they might be offended, so I considered going over to offer an apology. But before I could do so, I was distracted by a higher priority: the missing snake had been located.
     It was somewhere in Albany, and it was up to us to go retrieve it and bring it home to David, who was its owner. "Us" meant me, Dave, Dorothy, and maybe a few others, but I was  primarily responsible. (It was my dream.) Cut to a highway in Albany and later to Oakwood Avenue. We were guiding the snake along the roadside. For some reason, which was never in question by any of us, we had to guide the snake as it slithered along. It had to make the trip on its own.  It was a long and tedious process, with several incidents along the way, but eventually we reached Schaghticoke, where all which had promised a successful outcome  suddenly went wrong.
    As we reached the elementary school, proceeding up the old cut-off road, the snake made a sudden right turn, or as sudden as slithering allows, and veered into the school building. We followed along, still guiding it, so relieved that we would soon arrive home and I could report good news to David. But then the snake, so smoothly proceeding down the corridor, veered offtrack once more and slithered under the closed doorway of the science room.
  Of course we followed into the classroom where the teacher was teaching a class gathered in the front of the large room. The snake had disappeared into the long closet at the back of the room. We slid open the closet door, expecting to find our snake.  But what we saw appalled us. The floor was piled with shoes and boots, and interwoven among them a mass of snakes, of differing sizes and colors. We carefully inspected all of them, but none matched our snake. We realized we had to abandon our search. But I took one more look into a far corner and spotted a snake curled up there.  We were delighted because it looked like our missing snake, but unfortunately, on closer examination, it turned out not to be so.
     I pulled from the corner the snake's shirt. Everyone else, including the teacher who had finished teaching his class and was now attempting to help us sort through the snake pile to locate ours, thought the shirt was ugly, but I  thought it was pretty good looking. The shirt was lemon-yellow with some kind of coordinating trim down each side. The size was small, as befitting a shirt for a snake. I shook the shirt out, placed it on a hanger, and carefully hung it in the closet.