When I used to imagine what I would say to Steve Whitmire if/when I ever met him, I thought I might tell him that meeting him was literally a dream come true. What I actually said to him after spending the day with him at OCon is that meeting him had been better than a dream come true. 

Before actually meeting Steve, I occasionally had dreams in which it happened, but I rarely, if ever, got the chance have much of a conversation with him because I would wake up or something in the dream would distract or prevent me. 

As it happens, I had one of these dreams about a week before OCon, and I’m going to talk about it in italics and present tense so no one confuses it for something that actually happened.

It takes place in a house that is supposed to be mine but doesn’t look like anything like the house where I actually live. As a matter of fact, it looks more like the house where I used to watch the original Muppet Babies with the kids I was baby-sitting when I was in high school. But I digress.

There are a bunch of strangers wandering around my house for no discernible reason. I notice that Steve is there, using a Koosh ball to play catch with a random kid. But it isn’t Steve as he appears now, in 2019. Rather, it’s Steve from the Fraggle Rock era, with the poofy blond hair and no beard. He throws the Koosh ball wildly, the kid fails to catch it, and it lands at my feet, so I pick it up to throw it back to Steve. 

Now, in reality, I don’t have any particular athletic prowess, but I can throw a Koosh ball with some degree of accuracy.

In my dream, however, I have no throwing ability whatsoever, and the Koosh ball, in defiance of any known laws of physics, falls straight down and hits the floor about 3 feet away from me. Steve laughs hysterically at this. I laugh too and say, “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” Steve says, “Nope!” and we laugh about it some more. 

End of dream. 

What’s remarkable about it to me is that the familiarity and playful banter between me and Dream!Steve is not that far off from the way it was when I met him for real. 

Incidentally, when I saw the picture of Steve and Wembley at Steve’s autograph table at OCon, it made me think of my dream, and I knew that was the picture that I had to have. It seemed fated.