I’m on a short flight from Detroit to a small airport in Pennsylvania. This morning has been quite an adventure in being a grown up.

I went to bed at one this morning, then woke up four hours later to catch my flight. I don’t think anyone likes to get up after just four hours of sleep. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember any part of my drive to the airport. After I got my ticket, my body was screamed for a cup of coffee. But I wanted to sleep on the plane, so I avoided caffeine and walked past the Starbux to get in line at security.

It’s so funny to stand in line with other grown ups who are tired and cranky like little kids. Once I got to my gate, the chairs were piled with people taking little naps. Sleeping is an intimate experience, and it was funny to see how silly they all looked. Those who weren’t sleeping stared blankly into the distance. I walked to the window and watched the first light of dawn. The sky was growing warmer, and the mountains were a cool blue.

I fell asleep a few minutes after I sat down on the plane and then stumbled into dreamland. I was at a concert amphitheater carved into the high mountain ridges of Arizona. In the distance you could see fantastic canyons and mountains of boulders. The whole place looked familiar.

It was so exciting to be that high above the towns beneath us. Next to the concert venue was an airport that walked through.; My luggage collided with Avril Lavigne. We both apologized like nice people do. We chatted for a while about random things, then I explained to her that I was involved in youth ministry, and she was thrilled that I had used my fame for something good. So I asked for her phone number so we could be in touch, and she handed me several sheets of paper with notes scribbled on them.

By this time in my dream, the two teenagers sitting next to me on the plane woke me up. I patted my hands on my pant pockets and couldn’t find the papers that Avril had written on, so I knew I had to get back into the dream to see if I could read them and try to remember what she wrote. So I covered my head with my airplane blanket and went back to sleep.

Now the airport had turned into a parking garage next to the lake in my hometown in Georgia. I saw teenagers strutting through the parking deck towards the concert. Each of them was wearing a shirt that I had designed. I was excited to talk to them, but my conversation was interrupted by a flashback montage. It showed the Miz from the Real World New York taking my designs, changing them, then selling them for himself. By the time the montage was finished, the teenagers were already lost in the concert crowd. I wasn’t upset; that the Miz stole my designs; I was flattered that someone would bootleg my designs. The dream flipped and swirled away from that scene into something I can’t remember.

The flight attendant on my plane tapped my forearm and asked me to lift my seat up because it was time to land. Although I was bummed that my dream was over, I was more excited that I had slept through the whole three and a half hour flight.

I am always disoriented for the first few minutes after I wake up. I walked out of the plane and realized I was in Terminal A in Detroit. I don’t know when this Terminal was built, but every time I walk through, I feel like I am in a futuristic movie that I could’ve seen as a kid: moving sidewalks, huge TV screens, a sleek train. The only thing that was missing was robotic floor sweepers.