A dream come true for some people may include having a lot of money, a nice house, or a lot of friends, but to me a dream come true would sound like a book Hunter S. Thompson could have written.
Modern popular culture often conceives dreams as expressions of the dreamer's deepest fears and desires, which makes no sense to me because I never thought I desired or feared hanging out with Ellen DeGeneres, Cee Lo Green, and Steve Harvey in a Chuck E. Cheese and then being guided to SpongeBob’s Pineapple temple by apocalyptic looking squirrels, turning into ostrich care slaves, and then being chased down by a pack of ravage ostriches led by Ozzy Osbourne.
My dream started out as what I thought would just be a pleasant get together between Cee Lo Green, Ellen DeGeneres, and me at Chuck E. Cheese. We were all just having a blast playing ski ball and trying to get free tickets from the game machines for better prizes when, all of the sudden, Steve Harvey busted in shouting “THE PRICE IS RIGHT!!!” After explaining to Steve that he was the host for Family Feud instead of The Price Is Right, he fell to the floor and threw a temper tantrum and started screaming “THE PRICE IS WRONG DREW, IT’S WRONG!!!” I slapped Steve with a fish that appeared out of nowhere, which calmed him down enough to stop babbling like a baby so Cee Lo could sing Crybaby for him while Steve curled up in Ellen’s lap hyperventilating and wishing he had his stuffed teddy bear named Zorgon there to comfort him. Finally, after Steve was calm again, we started playing more ski ball. I was doing really well, but when I looked over, I saw Charlie Sheen dressed as an employee playing too. I started talking to Charlie about how much Two and A Half Men sucks with Ashton Kutcher, but then Charlie’s boss, Donald Trump, came out and fired Charlie for playing on the job. All Charlie did was smile, take off his shirt, and yell “WINNING!!” He then ran over to the ball pool and dived in; that was that last time I ever saw Charlie Sheen.
At this point, I’m like “what’s going on, eh”, with an Australian accent that appeared out of nowhere. Cee Lo, Steve, and Ellen are just as confused, so we decide we’ve had enough Chuck E. Cheese for a lifetime and begin to get ready to leave. When we get to the door to leave, it’s labeled “push”, so I push and push and push, but it wouldn’t open. Then I tried pulling, thinking that maybe this door is just messing with me trying to be a wise guy, but it wouldn’t budge. I turned around to tell everyone we were stuck inside this huge arcade, but I couldn’t even speak when I saw what was going on. At some point during my frantic door pushing/pulling attack, Cee Lo, Steve, and Ellen decided to assemble some sort of battering ram out of a mechanical Chuck E. Cheese figure to get us out. While they worked on the giant mouse, I sat by and thought about how much I could go for some Pizza Hut. About one minute later, a huge mouse head flew past me and crashed straight through the doors, busting them open without any effort. I looked back at the trio I was with and just shook my head thinking “these people are crazy, but hey, it works.”
When we stepped outside, right away I thought that Chuck E. Cheese was probably the safest place to be. All around us we saw dinosaurs, not big scary ones like a T-Rex, but those little weird looking ones that are more fun to look at than scary. I could handle that. It was the fact that besides the dinosaurs, there were thousands, maybe more, of squirrels. I’m not talking cute little acorn eating squirrels. These things were like little walking aftermaths of an apocalypse with red eyes and a big appetite, and they were staring us down like we were their supper. For about a minute, we stood motionless and watched the dinosaurs move about in their weird way, wondering why the squirrels only looked at us like we were food? I’m sure about 50 of the things could take down a dinosaur fairly easy. I found out shortly after watching these dinosaurs that they were so stupid they would try to eat their own arm or leg. Their stupidity must make them taste bad even to the squirrels of doom. I looked over to Steve, who had already pee’d his pants, then to Ellen, who was wishing she had accepted an offer to appear on Oprah that day, then to Cee Lo, who was just smiling wide looking like he was on the verge of laughing. I nudged him in the stomach and, in a hushed tone, asked him what was so funny. He looked right at me and said “There’s a reason they are staring us down, but it’s not because we look tasty. They love to watch Finding Nemo, and Ellen DeGeneres is in front of them. Wouldn’t you be staring in pure amazement?”
At this point in the dream, I had told Ellen to act like Dory around the squirrels because they were huge fans and might help us out. Once she realized I was serious, she stopped laughing and started quoting Finding Nemo in Dory’s voice “I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy. Come on, Squishy. Come on, little Squishy.” The squirrels immediately started cheering and gathered around us. It took about ninety squirrels to carry Ellen, and zero to carry us because we didn’t get the special accommodations she did, all because we hadn’t starred in a major motion picture about a fish swimming through the ocean. If you ask me, I think it was really because there wouldn’t be enough squirrels to haul Cee Lo Green and Steve Harvey around. Yeah, that sounds right. After walking for about three miles, we came to a big temple that was shaped like SpongeBob’s pineapple. When we reached the top of the stairs, the head squirrel, Snowball, did some sort of secret knock that opened the doors immediately. Inside, the temple was indescribable. Someone famous has to be here I thought. There were at least six couches in the living room, all packed with squirrels watching Finding Nemo on a flat screen, a fire place that had chestnuts roasting over it (go figure, squirrel luxury), and more doors than I could count. Where these doors led to, I had no idea, but I sure wanted to find out. I thought I was safe until I saw the portrait on the wall depicting a man sitting atop an ostrich, then I knew the feathers would start flying.
I had a gut feeling that in this world there was a dictator or ruler of some kind, I just didn’t think I’d know who it was right when I saw him. Ozzy Osbourne, Prince of Darkness, turned to the King of the OZZtriches. This was going to get a lot worse before it got better I thought…I was right. The squirrels, being huge fans of Ellen, decided she could stay free and just chill happily, but the rest of us were forced to go to Ozzy and choose our fate; become slaves for eternity and take care of his ostriches or, worse, be trapped in a room with bright pink walls that played Justin Bieber nonstop for eternity. I chose taking care of the ostriches.
Somehow, in my dream, the time went by and a week later I was in the ostrich quarters wishing I would have stayed at Chuck E. Cheese. I cleaned up ostrich crap for three hours a day, every day, and spent the rest of the time either bathing, grooming, walking, or feeding them. Cee Lo Green was with me, unfortunately though, Steve Harvey had a terrible fear of ostriches so he chose sitting in the Bieber hell room, which couldn’t be any better than what I was going through. From time to time, Ozzy would stop down to make sure all of his “children” were satisfied with our work. I have to admit seeing Ozzy pet an ostrich was a little cute; except for the fact I was being held prisoner by him, and the “cute ostrich” he was petting was one that gave me problems all day long. I swear it had some personal issues with me. After Ozzy finished his inspection, he told Steve, Cee Lo, and me that that night would be the “Running of the OZZtriches”, and we would be set loose to try to escape. When night time came, Ozzy followed through with his plan and set us loose outside the temple. He just forgot to mention the fact that ostriches would be chasing us, and Ozzy would ride his personal favorite ostrich, Fluffy, around until we were caught again and taken back to ostrich quarters for life.
Then I woke up.
A dream come true may be an awesome thing for some people, but I didn’t enjoy being stuck in a Chuck E. Cheese, seeing dinosaurs that served no purpose, walking three miles with scary squirrels, caring for ostriches, being a slave, and then being chased down by Ozzy Osbourne and his army of OZZtriches, so I’ll stick with reality and stay awake.