Something about nickels... collecting them? Or perhaps they are
tokens in the parts that followed? Also, some sort of
meta-dream.
I am in the Army — I am shopping, trying hard to avoid the officers, and then I have to prepare for inspection by a hostile officer who doesn’t like my hair.
This seems to be a recurring dream of sorts, where I have, for reasons I can never really understand, re-enlisted multiple times in the Army, but my hair is styled in a way and length that is definitely not with regulation, but somehow people keep covering for me. The action of the dream, though, centers on my efforts to stay out of view and remain invisible to those who might object to my hairstyle. The crisis usually comes when I realize that, to end my enlistment, I am almost certainly going to need to cut my hair, something I am desperate to avoid.