Crazy Crap Item #12: The part where I make a pithy comment in a dream, and when I awake, it still seems pithy

I have crazy, crazy dreams. Most are impossible to recount. They make perfect sense when I'm dreaming them, then I wake up and -- poof! -- it was a trip to crazy town.

So imagine my surprise when I awoke from a dream at 2am this morning, and found that a dream I had still made a modicum of sense. Better still, I could remember a witticism I made during the dream, and it still seemed mildly amusing when I awoke. Or at least I think it did. You decide:

I'm at a rehearsal for my old a cappella group, singing away. At the end of the rehearsal, I head toward the El to go home. On the way, I'm noticing how funky and fun the neighborhood is. And I start to recognize people I know. I glance down a side street and see a woman I know, sitting on a porch, playing guitar, surrounded by friends. That looks like fun, I think. And just as I'm turning the corner on the next street, and thinking I should head back to say hi to her, I see, there, on the sidewalk, a guy I dated about 15 years ago. Ron was his name.

We see each other and laugh, and I say, "Well, this is just the next in a string of crazy things today!" He introduces me to the woman he's dating, and takes off. There's something he has to do, but he'll be back. His girlfriend invites me into her apartment, and we chat. I look out the window, and see that the neighborhood has a strange, shimmery feel to it. It's very windy. People are out on the street, hippie types some. This is Wicker Park, I think, though in my dream logic, Wicker Park blends with Montmartre and the land of Oz -- a lyrical, bohemian place where free spirits ramble with abandon.

If you know Chicago, you know that's oddly fitting. Wicker Park is one of those used-to-be-rundown, then-the-artists-took-over-and-soon-the-yuppies-will-arrive neighborhoods that every big city seems to have. It's hot hot hot among those who wear goatees and go to poetry readings. That's why they made a movie about it.

Anyhoo, I'm chatting with the girlfriend, and taking in the bohemian splendor, and I say, "I'm willing to bet that at any given moment 400 novels about Wicker Park are being written in Wicker Park."

Okay, maybe it wasn't that pithy.