" ... it's Saturday Night!"

In the middle of the tropical ocean, I am watching a live taping of Saturday Night Live. Mike Myers and two other cast members (one dressed in a mascot-like shark suit and the other in an octopus) sit in front of the lone camera, relaxing in their inflatable chairs with those awesome holes for you to put your beer in.

There is no land visible, but the water is relatively shallow. The water is that beautiful color of blue that you only see near the shore of white tropical beaches. It's like a coral reef in the middle of the ocean, maybe thirty feet deep all around.

The filming at this location is done, and the camera disappears. The chairs and mascot-suits also disappear, and now I am one of the cast members. We are all wearing wetsuits and antique snorkel gear. We put our heads down and start swimming to the west. Behind us, far to the east and barely visible, is a boat chasing us. One of those inflatable boats used by navy SEALs. We keep swimming as the boat gets closer and closer.

Unlike most of my dreams which involve deep water or the ocean, this one is relatively calm and peaceful. Maybe it's my love of the tropics offsetting my general unwarranted apprehension towards open ocean and strong hatred for all species of fish and most aquatic life. Although I am snorkeling, I haven't yet seen beneath the near-waveless surface of this ocean. The boat, however, is now almost upon us. We don't even see it coming.

I watch it happen like it's a wide-screen movie with no music and muted sound. The boat strikes. All of a sudden, all I can see is bubbles. The other cast members, the boat, the boat's operator, myself, everything is swirling through the coral towards the sandy seafloor in a cloud of bubbles. As we near the bottom the bubbles dissipate and we stop moving. Then, simultaneously, we all see it.

Sitting on the ocean floor in an open area of sand is a single folding chair and a table. It's a small table, only made for one person. It's all set up for lunch. Red with white plaid tablecloth, a daisy in a flowerpot, a plate and some silverware. We start filming again, through one of those crappy cameras that they have on deep sea research submarines. We all stare with our crappy-camera-vision at the chair and table, like it's some sort of magical, all-powerful, mystery-of-the-universe-revealing artifact of the ancients. Appropriately, I wake up.