Meeting Cast Members from Saturday Night Live

Dream from a few nights ago:

I am in a large building, something that looks like a cross between a mall and a hospital. I walk into a small room filled with people. I notice Seth Meyers and a couple of other comedians from SNL. Seth has what looks like a bullet hole in his back and I mention it to him while a woman tries to find the cause for the hole. Seth acts as if nothing is wrong. He is in no pain, so he ignores it.

Three SNL members stand together and I walk over to them. They ask me what I do. I say, "I'm a writer." In unison, they all say, "She's a writer," not in a way to sound condescending, but more to sound funny. I ask them how I can send in a skit to SNL, and I am met with an, "Ooh, that's really difficult." And, "Ooh, I don't know…" They then walk away.

I start to follow them because I want to tell them that I have been watching SNL since the early days when Gilda Radner was performing, but then I realized that I rarely watched it after that first season, so I decided to leave them and find a washroom.

The washroom is located down a hallway and down some steps. Though it is clearly marked for women, after I open the door, I see a bunch of filthy men smoking cigarettes, sitting on all kinds of things, including chairs, crates, and counter tops, but I don't see any toilets. The room is a mess filled with debris. 

The men let me know they are there for more sinister reasons as they wait for women to come in. They ask me where I'm from. When I tell them I'm from Chicago, they decide to allow me to be in there alone. But I don't know how to use the facility because I see no toilets. 

A little Oriental woman walks in and finds a kind of plastic chamber pot sitting on the floor. She uses that while I look for another one. Everything is out in the open. When I finally find one and use it, she notices something I've written on a piece of paper that sits on the floor. She reads it and tells me I'm really good and asks me if I would write a blog for her website. I feel honored and say yes.

As I walk out of the washroom, I am acutely aware that the men who allowed me into the washroom are probably still close by. I sneak out and as I round the corner in the hallway, they see me and come toward me. To diffuse what might be an uncomfortable situation, I thank them for leaving the washroom and I quickly return to the room where the SNL members are gathered to tell them that I'd found a writing job.

Suddenly though, I'm driving or walking down a street in a very cute neighborhood, thinking about possibly moving there. I am with my former daughter-in-law's mother, who agrees that it might be a good place to live. Shortly after the homes, I see lines and lines of apartment buildings, all of which appear to be very tiny. I recognize that I wouldn't be able to live in them, because animal dander and smoke might circulate through the vents and I would become sick. There the dream ends.

###

When the original Saturday Night Live aired, I watched every show and I decided I wanted to write for them, especially during a lengthy hospital stay back in 1977. I wrote several skits for them and even moved to New York, but I found myself in a whirlwind of obstacles I could not overcome. I recount that merry-go-round trip in the blog, Expectations of a Writing Career.

Seth Meyers appeared at the University of Illinois (my neighborhood) not long ago, and I'm sure the memory of SNL combined with his appearance in my town set the stage for this dream. My dream of Seth Meyers having a bullet hole occurred before the Connecticut murders, so the dream isn't connected at all to the murders. I don't know what the bullet hole represents, but Seth Meyers is obviously alive and well.

As far as the disgusting men in the women's bathroom is concerned, I don't know what part of my psyche put them there. To be honest, I have been thinking that my career is "in the toilet," so that part of the dream came as no surprise. But, even in the toilet, I found hope (through the woman who wanted me to write for her web site). So all hope is not lost (if you are an Oriental woman looking for a writer for your web site, I'm your girl).

I will not however be moving into an apartment now or ever, since I've already been in apartments where residents in the same building either smoked or had animals, and I had a bad reaction to the smoke and dander.

I could not imagine a scenario where my former daughter-in-law's mother and I would be walking anywhere together, and then this past weekend, after I exited my car in the parking lot where my grandson's soccer game was being held, I walked past my grandson's other grandmother and we walked into the game together.