Frank Scoblete's ANALYZE THIS!

My wife, the beautiful AP, says that my dreams are so easy to analyze I don't present much of a challenge to her prodigious abilities to interpret dreams. Okay, so let's see if that's so. Interpret if you will.

Last night I had a dream....

But before I get into that, let me tell you a few things about me that you need to know to approach even a cursory insight into my dream state. One year ago today (August 29, 1998) I became a vegetarian. I did so after AP deluged me with articles about mad-cow disease and the abominable damage that meat was doing to my health. (I also gave up drinking wine as well as I had gone from 150 pounds in 1986 to 206 pounds in 1998.) Also my doctor was telling me that I had dangerously high levels of just about everything you shouldn't have dangerously high levels of. He is my second doctor, by the way. My first, his 47-year-old partner, died of a massive heart attack just before he was going to run in the New York City Marathon.

So now it's one year later and I weigh in at a trim 170 pounds and I have no idea of what my levels of anything are in the last six months because I hate to go to the doctor. I have physicianophobia. Ever since I was a kid (age 9?) and the doctor said I had a heart murmur (I didn't) and I had to go for tests and couldn't play ball, then in my teen years when the doctor said I might have diabetes (I didn't) and I'd have to go for tests (awful tests), and then in my 20s when I forget what it was the doctor said I might have, but I didn't have it, but I still had all these tests, and then in my 40s when I did the full-stress test where they pump in some radioactive chemical that looks like urine into your arm just after I'd run for however long they wanted me to run in order to find out if I had any blood mixed in with the lard in my veins (everything was as unclogged as a bell), I have been terrified about going to doctors. I'm not and never have been comfortable with mortality. The fact that you (specifically you, the person reading this article) are going to die I am resigned to; the fact that I'm going to die does not sit well with me.

Now as I just turned 52, the thought of going for more tests (I don't know that I'll have to have tests done, mind you, because I feel great! but I have always felt great and they always wanted to do tests!) scares the hell out of me, but not as much as seeing a huge hairy right hand swathed in latex, greased to the nines, heading for my hinder parts....

I want a friendly little doctor, preferably a woman, with teeny-tiny hands, who will come to my house and mother me and tell me: "Screw the tests, Scobe, you'll live to be at least 53."

But I digress.

Last night I had a dream. I was in Las Vegas but it wasn't the Vegas any of you are familiar with. In fact, there were only a couple of casinos. The one I entered had an outside, uncovered parking lot with blackjack tables in the spaces where cars would normally park but these tables were not being used. The lot was deserted. Not a soul around. Inside was a big swimming pool where dining tables used to be set up. It was now a pool but it used to be a restaurant and the tables were all under water. I walked into one part of the casino but it was empty. Just a big empty room. Then I noticed in the corner a few craps tables, strangely shaped, like crescents and then three blackjack tables over there in some nebulous somewhere.

One was a multiple-deck shoe and two were double-deck games. I headed for the first double-deck table. I had to find a chair because there were four people at the table and no chairs and the only chair I could find was all torn up. I was about to stand at centerfield when a guy in a wheelchair took that position. So I stood behind him. The casino had great rules -- just for me it seemed -- the dealer allowed me to see my first two cards before I bet. That's right, if I had a blackjack I would be able to bet the table max. The only problem was I had no American money. Just Canadian -- just singles [in my dream, Canadian currency had dollar bills] -- and they were constantly stuck together. My first hand was a 20 and I was going to bet a few hundred of the singles but I couldn't get the damn money on the table and the dealer passed me by. This happened three or four more times. I'd take out this huge wad of Canadian bills and I couldn't separate them. Once, on a blackjack, which was the last hand I played at that table, I just put the whole wad on the table and the pit boss came over and said: "You have to separate the bills."

Then I saw my good friend Catherine Poe [editor's note: Catherine Poe writes the "On the Go with Poe" column for The New Chance and Circumstance Magazine] and I called out: "Hey, Cathy, let's play at that table!" indicating the other double-deck table that was empty. As I started walking to the table, I noticed that the guy in the wheelchair was perched over a hole in the floor that was bubbling water.

At the new table, the rules were radically different. Poe's first hand consisted of 14 baked potatoes. The dealer was showing eight slices of bacon, very crisp bacon. I knew the basic strategy for that hand cold. You never hit 14 baked potatoes against eight slices of crisp bacon. I told her so. She asked why. I took out my wad of Canadian bills and then explained to her that they weren't worth as much as American money. So she didn't hit her 14 baked potatoes.

Then my wife, the beautiful AP, woke me up. I told her the dream as we took our daily six-mile walk. She said: "That's easy!"

Okay, if it's so easy...you tell me what it all means.

E-mail your answers to Frank Scoblete's Dream to slotexpert@home.com. We'll post the best interpretations.