Dreamed that it was late, the wee hours, and
raining heavily. Donna and I were working on the back of our television
when the doorbell rang.
I checked the porch and, to my surprise, saw
Bruce Springsteen standing there, smiling wryly and shrugging his
shoulders as if to say "Why me? Why me all the time?" Of course I let
him in and he explained that he'd had a flat a block or so away and mine
was the first house he'd seen with its
lights still on.
"I don't like to go around, waking people up, just to
tell 'em my troubles," he mumbled in a chipper, upbeat way, as he
stepped inside, shaking the rain off like a sheepdog.
I invited Bruce to
take a seat and he chose to sit on the floor of my foyer ("No need to
treat me special"), and encouraged me to go back to whatever I was
doing; AAA would be there "soon enough."
I walked over to Donna and
whispered "Hey look, it's Bruce Springsteen!"
She whispered back,
"You're right! Say, do we have any of his albums? Get 'em signed."
I
started going through our music inventory in my head and realized we did
have one of his albums, my favorite. I walked over to Bruce and told
him how I liked one of his albums especially.
"Oh yeah?" he said,
looking genuinely surprised. "Which one?"
I told him it was the one
about his conversion to Catholicism, but I couldn't remember the title.
This was so embarrassing -- to not be able to remember the title of a
"favorite" album, a record I was about to ask him to sign... but he
couldn't remember it either! I went to look for the album on vinyl but
didn't really know what I was looking for.
Finally, Bruce called out
from the next room, "Hey, you know, I think it was called somethin' like...
BRING OUT THE BODIES!"
That was it! I found the album and brought it
back to Bruce with a Sharpie and we both started laughing when we saw it
was an Elvis Costello record.
"It could be worse," he finally managed
to say. "You could'a handed me my flat tire!" Then we laughed even
harder, till we were both red in the face.
I woke up smiling.
