It should be no secret that I have some pretty bizarre dreams. I can’t remember if I’ve ever mentioned it here, though I’m sure I have at some point, that I’ll go maybe months without remembering any of my dreams. Then I’ll have a string of nights where my dreams are just freakin’ weird.

Last night, I had a doozy.

We start things off in the church office, where I work. Things were a bit distorted, but I knew I was at work. Julie, our Children’s Ministry Director, and Megan, who basically runs the show in our office, had brought their dogs with them to work that day. For some reason, they were in the bathroom with me.

Why was I in the bathroom? Glad you asked. Obviously, I was in there getting into costume. See, I was due on stage at a local theater where I was to play a small role in William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. I was nervous.

I struggled to not only get dressed and wrangle two dogs with whom I’m not really familiar, but also to try and memorize my lines at the last minute. In the struggle, I accidentally broke both dogs’ leashes.

When I emerged from the bathroom, I was extremely apologetic, feeling horribly guilty about breaking the leashes. It was totally an accident. But I felt worse about that than I did about not having all my lines memorized in time for the play.

But I was nervous about the play. Because, as if it weren’t strange enough, this play starred Jimmy Fallon as Romeo. Yeah. And the critics were loving the thing. They’d been saying things like, “This is the role that Fallon was born to play!” No pressure.

This was to be my debut. I was an understudy, I guess. But for a small role. Do they do understudies for small roles? I don’t know. I’ve been in one play in my entire life and that was just in college. In this version of Romeo & Juliet, I would be doing a scene with the host of The Tonight Show.

After I apologized to Julie and Megan for breaking their leashes (and promising to buy them new ones), I excused myself. I knew I had to get to the theater early so I could be on stage when I was supposed to. Everyone else was coming to watch later.

As I drove to the theater, I was annoyed with how many people were out and about. It’s like I was trying to drive through a parade. Except there was a parade on every street between my office and the theater. And the pedestrians walking around looked like strange caricatures of actual people. They were wearing masks and brightly colored clothing. I didn’t know what was going on. But somehow, I knew it was all connected to the play.

Anyway, I got to the theater and the stage manager warned me not to screw up my part because I was the one who would give the visual cue for Jimmy to come out on stage for his first lines. Luckily, I had no lines myself, so I figured I could easily remember to give Jimmy the signal.

But as I stood there and the curtain opened, I realized that I not only didn’t know any lines I was supposed to speak, I had no clue what part I was actually playing.

Don’t worry, I didn’t forget to cue Jimmy. He came out like he was supposed to. But he didn’t know his lines either! I could hear someone backstage feeding him lines. I watch all this happening and I’m thinking, “This is who the critics love in this play? He’s the star and he doesn’t know any of his lines? (Hypocritical, I know) This guy can’t even keep a straight face in anything on SNL!”

That’s about the time I woke up. I was really glad I woke up before we got to any of my speaking parts. Because I sure wouldn’t have had a clue when I was supposed to speak or what I was supposed to say.

For the record, I actually like Fallon. The guy’s hilarious, whether he can keep a straight face or not. I just don’t picture him playing Shakespeare.