Meet Joe Black + Police Training

I watched the movie Meet Joe Black last night, and it had a large influence on my dreaming. However, I also combined it with the following movie premise:

"Imagine a family so skilled in the art of disguise that it's normal to question which relative you're really talking to."

(In the dream, this was a much more dramatic speech describing the situation... I couldn't replicate it properly.)

So, the family in Meet Joe Black was involved in a number of double-twists involving removal of masks and finding out who people really were.

The father (Bill Parrish) mentioned now and again some life work which he had kept secret. In the most important scene of the dream, Susan (who is the favorite daughter in the movie) convinces him to hand it over to her. (The implication seems to be that previously, he did not think she was up to the task.) Mr. Parrish removes some dusty papers in a binder, from an old box of toys left over from before the children grew. He gives these to Susan. She takes off her mask and it turns out that she is really the mother, who everyone thought to be dead for many years.

In the dream, I had joined the police force as a side job to make spending money while finishing school. There was a scene at the firing range, learning to use a gun. The chief demonstrated several types of guns, showing us that with the most expensive gun, it was much easier to hit bullseye every time; he lamented the fact that the police department didn't have the budget to buy that gun for everyone, saying that it would save lives.

It seems that I was taking a city bus every day in this life, between two very different parts of the city. I would regularly be in the neighborhood of Bill Parrish and his family during part of the day.

There was a scene where our rights as police were explained to us. We were told that we had no right to violate the law, and so in many situations we were dependent on the compliance of the criminals we were trying to catch. There was a scene illustrating this, with one of my fellow police-in-training talking to an uncooperative youngster who looked like he may be trying to break into a house, but had not yet violated any law, and was waiting for the policeman to be on his way.