I Dream of Ginger

I have long been fascinated by dreams and dreaming (the kind you do when you are asleep, not the ones involving winning the lottery or getting married or living in Anderson Cooper’s laundry basket (that last one might just be me, though)). I’ve taken classes on dream analysis; I have four dreamer's dictionaries on my night stand; I used to keep a dream diary; and I’ve watched countless TV documentaries on the subject. (I think it is pretty obvious that I am enamored of dreams because my waking life is so downright uneventful and on the whole pretty sad - I’ve been slim in dreams; I’ve been loved; Sammy can go outside.)

But recently, I’ve had dreams in which particular words have stood out. The dreams have not been about that word per se, it has just made its presence known. And then I formed the notion (and I do not know if it was when I was awake or asleep) that these words were the names of horses taking part in horseraces. One morning after such a dream I went online to see if I could find a listing of horseraces taking place that day but I got distracted by a video of a cat, and never got around to looking up horse stuff.

That was until this weekend. I cannot remember anything about the dream itself, just that the word ginger was important somehow. I already had plans to go to the Champagne brunch at the casino next door as an Easter treat, so I decided to stop in the sports book while I was there. OK, so, wow, there are lots of horseraces in America! There were about 20 lists of races! No way was I going to read through all of them so I decided to pick three. I chose Golden Gate Fields (because gold is a color, like ginger is); then Hawthorne Race Course (because Hawthorne is a plant, like ginger is) and Penn National because I used to live in Pennsylvania. That one was the last one I chose but the first one I read. This is the listing for the seventh race:

O. M. G.

This is the result of that race:

Holy eff, right?

I bet $5 to win. A co-worker looked up the odds or the numbers or the form or whatever it is and calculated I’ll probably get about $23 back.  (I don’t plan to go cash in the ticket until after this post is published, because I want to get it in before the end of March - I’ll let you know if it is any more than that.) Not enough to retire on or employ my own chauffeur, and I lost more than that at the Blackjack table after the buffet, but still, how flipping cool is that?

And kind of scary too, right? Because, well, cue, Twilight Zone music, I dreamed of ginger and a horse named Gingers Hero won. Is this not freaking you out? Because it is freaking me out big time.