September 30, 2023 (reading time 2 minutes)

After sharing a bottle of good prosecco with Ann last night, I dreamt of a place, a resort and hotel, with a pneumatic ski lift; giant tubes that could lift one with hair standing straight up, shooop!, straight to the top of the mountain. Sans skis, as I supposed they would get stuck in the tube.

At this resort, someone, not me, was prepping to take his bar exam, to become a lawyer. The test was conducted on a proprietary terminal with a time limit for completion, and our candidate had signed in and launched the exam, but stopped at question 1. Then he wandered off to admire the pneumatic ski lift.

The clock was ticking. I wanted to help him, and was pretty certain I’d noticed a paper copy of the exam somewhere nearby, not that it would necessarily help. But our examinee was unconcerned with the passage of time, and oddly confident he’d finish despite having wandered off. Such dreams annoy me, since I’m pretty sure I’m both the observer and the observed in them.

This dream was likely inspired by having recently seen ‘My Cousin Vinny’. Released in 1992, it’s a memorable film. Vinny was a New York lawyer who took six years and six attempts to pass his bar exam, and had never tried a case in court. He finds himself defending his cousin, wrongfully accused of murder in a small county seat in Alabama. Joe Pesci plays Vinny, Fred Gwynn the crusty judge, and Marisa Tomei won best supporting actress that year as Mona Lisa Vito, Vinny’s girlfriend.

It’s a film well worth revisiting.