I’m not one to give much thought to dreams, assuming I even remember them, which, most of the time, I don’t. And I certainly have no wish to bore anyone by rambling on about the warped movies that run behind my closed eyelids at night. God, is there anything more tedious than somebody telling you about a dream they had?

But…

I had a dream a week or so ago that just won’t leave me alone, so I’m going to become one of those tedious bores for a moment. Sorry.

In this dream, I was in the kitchen of my Grandma June’s old house on the west side of Salt Lake. Grandma’s been gone for years, and she didn’t live in that house for years prior to her death, but my parents still own the place — they use it as a rental property — and I’ve helped my dad remodel and freshen it up several times, so it’s as familiar to me as my own house. In the dream, though, I knew — in that weird, ineffable way you simply know stuff in dreams — that this was not my parents’ rental, but rather Grandma’s house. She was there in it somewhere, and if I’d walked around, I likely would’ve found her. Perhaps in that front bedroom that used to be her office, seated at the fabulous antique roll-top desk I always loved as a kid, punching keys on her old-fashioned adding machine. (I never did figure out how that thing actually worked.)

I did not go looking for her, though. I was occupied with my guest: President Barack Obama. He was leaning against the bar that separated the kitchen from the tiny dining area, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow. We were both drinking beer — plain old Budweiser from long-necked bottles, nothing fancy — and laughing about something, just shooting the shit like old friends.

Now, here’s where things get weird. (Really? Drinking cheap beer with the president in your dead grandmother’s kitchen — which hasn’t been her kitchen since you were a teenager, and yet somehow you’re a grown man in this scenario — isn’t weird yet?)

It was raining outside, and by raining, I mean raining. Cats-and-dogs, how’s-Noah-coming-on-that-ark rain, the sort we very rarely get out here in the desert, and when we do, it lasts only minutes. But this was sustained, rather like a storm I got caught in a few years ago in Washington, D.C. (Briefly, my buddy Robert and I were on foot, exploring the FDR Memorial, which is pretty spread out and also a good walk away from the parking lot; we were soaked to the skin by the time we got back to our car, and I ended up throwing away the waterlogged shoes I was wearing that evening.) Enough water was coming down that the four-lane road in front of the house had become a shallow river, and leisurely swimming up and down in that river — leisurely in spite of the fast-moving currents, mind you — were a number of day-glo green alligators.

And… that’s about it. There’s no punchline here. Nothing actually happened in this dream that I can recall. I have the impression that Barack and I were amused by the alligators, which we could see through the little window over the sink, but I don’t think we said anything about them.

I have no idea what any of this could mean, if it means anything at all. Which it probably doesn’t. But I have no idea where this little tableau came from… what inspired it, I mean. And I have no idea why the image keeps haunting me.

Maybe I need therapy.