It’s funny how much you can get to a person through their daydreams. Here I was on a blind dinner date. While I devoured my food she picked at hers. She was distracted, looking out of the window, a wistful look on her pretty face. I liked her but couldn’t figure out a way to break the ice. Now she daydreamed super-sized...No boys and girls, don’t go there. I may know your daydreams, but this ain’t that kinda story. Ahem. As I was saying, I caught her daydreaming super-sized fries.

It didn’t take long for someone like me, with the wits of a writer, who once published, ‘What your pet frog needs from you’ in a rural fair catalog, to figure out that she was either on Atkins or South Beach. This epiphany revised my small talk strategy. I leaned forward suavely, “Read somewhere that Jennifer Aniston’s on South Beach. But she’s got nothin’ on you.”

I got a beeg smile. And ze ice? Not just broken, my friends, but shattered into teeny-tiny shards, only to melt away as it got hot in there. It felt like I’d closed the sale. But I close sales of this nature as frequently as SETI draws a response from another world. And instinct told me that I’d have to pursue this gal as intently as I’d pursued the subject of pet frogs -- a pursuit that had propelled me into the exalted world of published authorship. My instincts proved correct. Her wistful look was back. She said, “I like you, Adam. But this is all wrong.”

Ever the optimist, I focused on the stated fact that she liked me. This was a definite first on a date. Not that I go out often. The daydream-catching business keeps me busy. And it can get emotionally exhausting. There was this time when I made ardent love to a perceived soul-mate, only to discover that she daydreamed some other guy the entire time. My shattered ego took a while to patch after.

Now the waitress interrupted my musings. My prior encounters with this species had introduced me to two subspecies. One the lifelong waiter or waitress. Second the one who mutates to either a robed maniac clutching a diploma on graduation day, or a cosmetic delight on the front covers of various men’s magazines. This particular specimen, who announced the night’s desserts, clearly jostled for the front covers of men’s magazines. Now I dragged my eyes from the far-side of the room, where they tend to stray under circumstances such as this, to look up at her. My gaze fixated on her nostrils.

A booger hung precariously, trembling as she talked, ready to crash precipitously down. Would it or wouldn’t it? So engrossed was I observing the progress of this ball of dried nasal mucous that I lost track of the ongoing dessert conversation. Now the waitress left and I couldn’t help but look after her still speculating if and when the booger would fall.

My date was staring at me in a strange way. “You like her, do you?” she asked. There was something in her tone that made me glance at her. Next the sound of a loud crash filled the room. Our waitress lay splat on the carpet, her entire body plastered with food and broken plates. When she raised her face the surrounding diners gasped in horror. Blood gushed from where her previously perfect teeth missed two front members. The booger was gone. Instead asparagus hung from her nostrils and mashed potatoes capped her eyes.

So engrossed had I been with first the booger and then the crashing waitress that I’d almost not noted the daydream that had floated in from my date. When I did note the dream I stared at her in wonderment. The wistful look on her face had returned. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “There I go again! You won’t understand.”

I grabbed her wrist. “Listen to me. I understand more than you think.” Still distraught, she said, “No, you don’t. You see I can injure...kill...annihilate...with a mere wish! I was so jealous of our waitress...”

I was about to tell her that a daydream had preceded her wish. So I knew already. But in my enthusiasm to comfort this tormented creature I knocked over a glass of red wine into her lap.

She flew into a rage. She snapped, “Damn! Just my luck. Now my dress is ruined. This sucks. I wish this whole civilized world would E...”

“Don’t go there!” I cried warning.

No training on earth prepares you for emergencies such as this one. However I must say that we published authors tend to think fast on our feet. Even as I yelled caution, my eyes spotted a plate of yummy brown fries on the next table. Like a frog in my previously mentioned published work, I jumped from my table to the next. With one smooth swoop, I picked up the fries, and with yet another hop like the aforementioned frogs, I banged the plateful of fries in front of her, skidding breathlessly to a halt beside her.

“...N...,” she managed, and then stopped distracted, staring at the fries under her nose. She never finished her wish to end civilization. Whew!

“Smell the fries,” I encouraged.

She did, inhaling deep, mouth watering away no doubt. Next she devoured them, eyes fluttering, tongue twirling to savor each mouthful, mouth chomping away, an expression of unadulterated pleasure on her face. The plate empty, she smacked her lips, “Yum! Thank you. I needed that. How did you know to do that?”

I smiled a modest smile. Now I’d have to tell her that we published authors are known to be perceptive, and that we occasionally save the world.