Wednesday, September 15, 2010

handsy old pastors

I've had a lot of very weird dreams lately and then forgotten them. Particularly frustrating was one just the other night that I was sure I wouldn't forget. Of course now it's gone, except for a vague impression that it may have involved a pig, and a certainty that there were a lot of subplots.

One that I didn't forget was another group trip (of course). This was a true, classic Group Trip dream: it was a mission trip with a large group of people. There was a lot of the requisite sitting around and waiting involved in the real life version of such a trip. We were getting organized transportation-wise, which involved picking a spot in one of several house-like contraptions that would be moved. I suppose they were vehicles, but from the inside they appeared to be houses, with separate, adjoining rooms and regular furniture instead of vehicle seats (the furniture and decor tended toward the fusty).

I was trying to pick a spot that would be okay for the long trip without being too greedy and picking a really prime spot, so I settled on the corner of a bed. I thought that with the large number of people in the group, all the furniture would fill up, leaving me with just one corner of the bed (not a wall corner, at that, so I wouldn't even have anything to lean on). I left some of my stuff there to stake my claim, and when I came back there was a group of girls camping out on the bed. They were younger than me, and sort of the stereotypical bold, slightly mean group of girls who does everything together and won't be broken up for anything. I hadn't quite grasped what was going on so I said, "I'm sorry, this is my spot", but they wouldn't take no for an answer. [I swear, this particular girl who wanted my spot, while just a dream fabrication and not an actual person, was the doppelganger of a girl I got into a fight with in a thrift store in a dream I haven't ever gotten around to recording.]

At this point I have to speculate about why I was so determined to keep my corner-of-the-bed spot when there were still much more desirable easy chairs scattered around (including one exactly like this lovely Anthropologie model). It may have been my subconscious trying to tell me something about a particularly bad real-life habit I have of not articulating what I want. Anyway, I ended up finding a hideous white-and-pink sprigged armchair that was very comfortable, if not very sturdy.

I don't know if we ever actually got started on the trip, or if this was all still during the waiting-around period, but there were several instances of trying to find something to eat. The options on offer were all typical nasty institutional cafeteria food. Worse than that, though, was this startling and embarrassing phenomenon: every time I was standing around trying to get something to eat, an older retired-pastor type would grab my derriere! The first time it happened I almost wondered if I had just imagined it. But no, any time I saw a similarly late-60s pastor type out of the corner of my eye (always a different one), the bum-grabbing was not long in coming. I was getting extremely irritated about it by the time I woke up. My husband tried to convince me it was some sort of sublimated desire, but I'm quite sure I don't have a fetish for handsy old pastor types.

1 comment:

CëRïSë said...

Haaaa! Great post; I think the third sentence was my favorite.

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