Running Late

I dreamed that my mom, sister, and I were running late. We were leaving for school from her old house, but I don't think we were children...I think I was an adult. There was a lot of rushing around for lost articles of clothing, books, lunches, etc while we were inside the house.

We got into the minivan that she drove in the early 90s and as we started to back out of the garage, a big van/truck zipped up the driveway and blocked us in. Apparently they were some kind of roadside assistance company who were responding to what they thought was a distress call. Mom didn't realize this. The man in charge rolled down his passenger window to talk to her. He was talking and she was nodding, but we couldn't hear him because she hadn't rolled down her window. I said, "How can you hear him? Roll down your window!" She did, but it was too late to explain. They had already opened her gas tank and were trying to refill it. The guy kept talking about how they'd gotten a call from this house. I was trying to shout across mom that they had the wrong address, but he wouldn't listen.

Finally, I turned to mom and said that they were going to charge us a lot of money for this emergency service, and we'd better just leave. Showing uncharacteristic disregard for damages, mom inched the van forward to make room to back up. We heard the gas nozzle rip out of the van, gasoline spraying everywhere, and the men shouting at us. Then she backed up and gunned it out of there.

We drove down the road, and mom made some comment like, "Well, that girl should have known not to call such an expensive service," which implied that the new residents of our old house (flashing forward into reality, I guess) were wimpy for calling roadside services.

As we drove, we noticed that there were lots of people burning piles of leaves, and we realized it was to keep down the mosquitoes.