Finding Erin Hamilton

It's funny... I think that I've always had dreams about meeting Carol Burnett. In my dreams it's never anything special. It just seemed that I knew her and there wasn't anything special about. I was supposed to know her, like she was family... Aunt Carol.

Then I met her and I went dumb. I could barely utter my name. You can read about the experience in another blog entry. Now, here's the funny thing. Now that I have met Carol, my dreams are exactly the same. I know her and it's not a big deal. She's like Aunt Carol again. But in the latest adventure, Aunt Carol set us (my trustee sidekick Jimmy Fallon and I) on a mission to find and draw out her daughter Erin.

At the outset, I should mention that in my dream, Erin was the same as her real daughter Erin. In my dream, she was teenager who hardly emerged from her bedroom, in part because she was painfully shy and in part because she was a teenager and teenagers just want to be left alone.

As our story begins, Jimmy is receiving an award for a performance in some show and he asks me to come up on stage with him to accept the award. In the front row, we both see Carol and she says that she's brought the family photos Jimmy asked for.

After the awards ceremony, Carol finds us and tells us that she needs some help with her daughter. So we go back to Carol's house and she shows us the door to Erin's room. We go in and find Erin sleeping under a massive white down comforter. Her room doesn't look like the average teenager's room. It's clean and organized. There aren't posters of music groups or movies stars. She wakes up and just sighs when she sees us. She knows why we're there and so she tells us to go away and pulls the comforter back over her head. She's isn't rude, but it is obvious that we aren't the first to invade her personal space.

Jimmy and I leave the room and try to figure out ways to draw her out and get her more involved with people. We decide to go to her school and organize a dance where she can get to know people. We decide to organize a series of mini dances in various classrooms along with a larger one in the cafeteria. Once all the students arrived, we set out looking for Erin. We couldn't find her anywhere. We figured that she just didn't come.

After searching all the rooms, we finally find Erin. She is sitting off to the side in the cafeteria, trying not to be noticed. We look at the stage in the cafeteria and Phoebe Buffet comes out to award the best art project award. She drew a name and it was Erin's name. Erin was thoroughly embarrassed and she reluctantly went on stage to get her award. However, a lady standing near by a slip of paper out of the box of names and discovered that Erin's name was the only name in the box. The crowd got upset and became clear why Erin was reluctant to accept the award. The crowd knew who Erin's mom was and they began saying that the only reason she won the award was because of her mother. Of course, Erin was even more embarassed. Kids can be so cruel.

Then -- I woke up. Stupid alarm clock. I want to finish a dream for once in my life.