Francis: A Nightmare

He looked better in my dream

This actually happened a few minutes ago. In my mind while I was asleep.

Recently I have been anxious about being out of shape. I haven't run in a month due to flare ups in my knees and I've been steadily gaining weight. So, I was dreaming this emotion and thus feeling a bit depressed.

Suddenly, a narrator spoke: "At least you're in better shape than Pope Francis." Sure enough, I started mentally reviewing pictures I had seen of the Pope--they were all header photographs from my blog posts--and I believed the narrator to be right. Curiously, that didn't make me feel any better.

I then noticed that all of the Pope pictures were coalescing into one. It was a side view of the Pope standing. He was wearing a baseball uniform with a blue windbreaker. He now didn't look out of shape and his paunch was gone. Indeed, I think I saw it shrink into nothing as if in a cartoon. He stood tall and straight.

And I was on the pitcher's mound facing him.

Strangely, perhaps, for the first time in this dream I felt good. Popes usually bat ninth and aren't very good hitters. 

But because this was a nightmare, I wasn't allowed to feel good for very long. There was already a count but for some reason I didn't know what it was. And when I looked down at my right hand I saw that it was holding not a baseball but a dinner roll.

A dinner roll. Or rather, it was two or three dinner rolls stuck together to create an extremely un-aerodynamic and fragile missile of bread that I felt would surely break apart before it reached home plate.

I threw the thing and it landed a few feet in front of me like a bad toy glider.

Ball two.

The Pope smiled.

If I could only get the thing over the plate I would wipe that smile off his face. After all, how far can you hit a dinner roll?

This time it traveled a bit farther--perhaps ten feet.

Ball three.

Three and two. But as I looked into the Pope's glinting eyes I found that I was now actually gripping a baseball. All I had to do was hurl it sixty feet, fast and true.

I threw it, and...the Pontiff hit the thing! It was a sharp ground ball slicing towards my legs.

In dreams the perspective often shifts or reverses. Sure enough, as the ball came at me it was suddenly my turn to run to first base. Or rather, it occurred to me that as I was starting on the pitcher's mound, I could bypass first and second and run directly to third. This made complete sense at the time.

It was a scramble, and the Pope--who was now wearing a white cassock--was right behind, holding the ball. I could sense him stretching that white evil orb towards me...

I slid in head first.

Safe!

I hugged the bag for a few seconds. There was dust all around. I straightened up a bit to brush off my uniform and get my knees out of an uncomfortable position. For not even a second I let go of the base...

...and felt the cold ball touch my shoulder.

For a horrible moment I looked at the other players and then at the umpire. Had they seen it? If not, was it ethical to pretend it didn't happen? It was a bit of a "technicality" after all.

Out!

Then the perspective again changed, whirling up to view a traffic jam of cars leaving the stadium with their horns shrieking...

...and I awoke to the blare of my alarm.