I'm travelling with a family - mother, father, teenage son and 3 or 4 younger kids, and a couple that's maybe his sister and her husband. We're going somewhere, and the name Lawrence, Kansas, comes up, but maybe it's only a stop. There's a lot of disagreement about the direction to take: we've been looking at the map and the father wants to go kinda straight north and visit somebody we know, but the brother-in-law says there isn't any connecting highway and he doesn't want to leave the road we've been on. He wants to leave the group; it isn't necessary that we stay together, but the father is doing his best to convince him to stay. While they're arguing, I have a look at the map myself. It does look a lot like this northern road just goes straight up and stops, but if you follow it back down a bit you can see an intersection with a big highway that will work just fine for us. So it's ok. The map I'm looking at is white, instead of being a standard one. The place we are, if it's a hotel, is kind of old and we seem to be sort of camped out in a long hallway instead of in rooms. Or it's like a gallery - there are windows open, showing daylight and a view of the town and treetops - we're upstairs - and we have our luggage around. I've sort of made sandwiches for everybody, but ran out of filling and there's bread left over. Also not everybody's eating the bread and I'm gathering it back up in case we need it later. At the other end of the hall the kids are playing, a little noisy. The older son is sort of babysitter. There's one very little kid; she's playing on the floor and has crawled into a tote bag with those strap handles and is puttering about like a windup toy. The son laughs. It is pretty cute. So we make it to this town we want to visit - there's a house where a friend of the family is working as a live-in housekeeper for a young executive - she left our home town to come here and we haven't seen her in a good while. This place keeps her busy, all right - the guy's not mean but he's demanding in that absent way that a lot of yuppies get - don't know any other way to get what they want, very regimented existence. She's a little harried, trying to keep up with him. (She's black, reminds me of a young Pearl Bailey but not a comedian.) I go to see this guy where he works - he's just about as harried as she is, trying to keep up with the demands of his bosses - they've got everything all laid out for their people. The executives get free groceries. There's a small grocery store right here on the office compound. (It's not a high-rise.) But there's not enough time for them to let everybody do their shopping when they want to, or something - they have this regimented, too. All these executives get 5-minute shopping sprees (once a day? I guess) - there's a guard with a gate and he has the schedule. I'm going along with our boy to help him out, but once I get in I get hampered by something and can't get hold of what I want. I look around for the guy and he's already gone. (Geez these guys can't help themselves, can they? Everything has to be done in a hurry.) I take what I do have and go back to the gate. There's a bottle of Canoe on the floor in my way - I assume it's been dropped by somebody and I kick it to one side. As I go through the gate, the guard says that that's the bottle of Canoe that was stolen the last time I came through here. Since I haven't even been in this town before, I assume he was talking to somebody else or some other error. I look at him but keep going on my way. It does occur to me that he was fishing - he's trying to nail a shoplifting charge on me. Why? Nobody's stopped me so far, but I'm beginning to wonder if he isn't maybe going to sick the cops on me. Geez. I go back around to this executive's office. I thought he was getting extra groceries for the visitors at his house, but when I go by I can see a lot of people sitting down to dinner in his office. It's got big glass windows - the interior reminds me of the old Peabody's. I'm not dressed up like they are, I guess I better go on back to his house and not interrupt his dinner party.