Dreams
When I went to sleep last night, the group home was more active than usual. One client was complaining about being uncomfortable when going to the bathroom, another was arguing with his roommate (accusing him of taking a watch the client didn’t come into the facility with and must have owned a long time ago) and the awake staff kept leaving the room to the laundry room open (it’s right next to the living room where I sleep, so thanks for the washing machine and dryer noise).
The first section of the dream was that I had missed my bus home. I took the opportunity to go for a hike and walked around a series of barren hills. I wasn’t wearing a watch, and didn’t think about what time the final bus would come until I realized I had been walking until dark. I went back to the nearest road, caught the bus and instead of going home, I went to the retail job I had had at Shinder’s when I first moved to MN.
I knew I had left the job a LONG time ago, but had agreed to come back for a shift here and there and I’d agreed to work Christmas Eve because it would be quiet. I got there, and the place wasn’t open. There were boxes of rare comics they wanted me to process to pass the time, and opened the store. As it got close to closing time, told the few people there we’d be closing in 5 minutes, started closing things down and a line formed at the register. Then, things went nuts.
The people in the store came up to the register, had things that weren’t priced, wanted to trade in things from other stores, asked me to buy baseball cards, attempted to grab money from the register and the line kept growing. My co-worker went home when the store was supposed to close without letting me know, and more and more people kept coming in.
They weren’t waiting in a line, either, but just surrounding the area and butting in front of each other. I get all weird even thinking about it…and it seemed to go on forever. After what seemed like at least an hour, people from the home office showed up to yell at me. They accused me of erasing the special hours off of the windows, of shutting own the registers and pocketing the cash and on and on, and the people kept coming. Eventually, I was able to break away from the crowd, and I just kept thinking I would miss Christmas.
Oddly, in the dream I didn’t quit. I did as soon as I woke up, though, actually muttering “screw that job.” Upon waking up, I actually felt more tired than when I went to bed because of how crazy it all was. What does it all mean?
“It doesn’t mean anything, Anna. It’s only a dream. Sometimes a banana is just a banana, Anna.” John Belushi as Sigmund Freud
Oh, and the overnight staff started complaining about the clients before I even put my glasses on in the morning….
