In a dream this morning, pressed firmly between the ten-minute bookends of my snooze buttton, I was hearing auditions for a play I was directing. Although I felt that creatively this project would fall into my hands, the power definitely belonged to the person sitting to my left. Perhaps he was the producer, the money that would get my project off the ground; my dream did not specify and let me fill in the details myself. Who was this stranger with Caesar’s thumb approval over my every decision?

Mr. Peanut.

Now you may think, as many of us have storytelling sense and like to embellish, that I have changed the person’s identity in order to make a dream story – something that always has more urgency and catharsis to the dreamer – just that much more bizarre to enchant my audience. Nay not, I say! No, even without his trademark top hat, cane and monocle I recognized the mascot immediately.

And even thus dressed (or undressed, it would seem), his snobbery remained at the forefront of his personality. As each audition ended, he would proclaim loudly, “Not…handsome…AT ALL!” and then proceed with a mean-spirited critique of the performance. One young lady was told, “Not…handsome…AT ALL! Please remove this young lady before she is so repulsed by her own whining that she heaves her Lunchables all over our proscenium.”

And then, as a sympathetic soul, I would attempt to give some encouragement to the actor, but I felt like even Kevin Spacey singing “Modern Major General” in his near-perfect diction would have raised the glowering ire of Mr. Peanut.

When all the auditions were over, I was speaking with a stagehand. In a low conspiratorial tone, she said to me “That’s why they call him Mr. Peanut.” I said, “It’s not because he’s a giant talking peanut wearing clearly male-engendered clothing?” “No, it’s because he’s so salty.”

You see? All that, and I was late to work for conceivably the worst joke on the planet. My subconscious is a realm where few dare to tread.