The Dream of Christmas

“Then what happened?” my friends asked when I paused in my story telling to steal parts of their lunch.  “Did you die?”

I shook my head as I ate one of my friend’s fries.  She held her orange juice threateningly over my head so I stopped.  I had missed my alarm this morning and didn’t have time to eat breakfast or make a lunch.  Thankfully, my friends were nice enough to give me what they didn’t want or felt they could spare.  It was a well known fact that I was as good as the guys when it came to being a garbage disposal.

“So, do you die in this dream?” came the question again.

It was an unusual question for anyone but me.  I had one accleptic dream that I somehow died twice in it.  Of course, all of those dreams had the feel of watching a movie.  Last night’s dream was as if I actually lived it.

“Actually, no,” I answered.  “He lit a candle and then it was more like one of those weird warping things you see in movies.”

Occasionally we had weird dream contests.  I won half the time and the contest was a source of high quality entertainment.  People who had problems with being unusual certainly missed out on a lot of fun.  Though last night was the first dream I could remember clearly for the past few months.

“The place we went was pretty psychedelic,” I continued.  “Picture airport luggage conveyors inside a geyser sort-of volcano type thing.  He said it was misdirected luggage, I think.”

“Geyser sort of volcano type thing?” someone snickered.

“Picture Old Faithful inside a volcano,” I tried explaining again.  “Nevermind.  It was just crazy.  We ran around on conveyor belts chasing a possessed suitcase.  My head hurt this morning from all the times I beaned myself on conveyors above.”

“What’d you really do?  Hit your head when you woke up?” one of the guys asked.

“Probably,” I admitted.  “I’m so tired from playing mommy that I could probably fall down the stairs in the morning and not notice it.  I’ll be lucky if I don’t fall asleep in fourth period.  I don’t know how my mom does it.”

“Well, that’s what you get for chasing possessed luggage in your sleep,” my best friend teased.  “Did you ever catch it?”

“Actually, yes,” I laughed.  “Apparently it was this weird hour glass that caused all the trouble.”

My friends continued to laugh for a while before the conversation changed to band practice, math tests, ACTs and the upcoming dance.  I stifled my yawns as I listened and finished off everyone’s lunches.  It didn’t take long for my head to hit the lunch table, though.  I spent the rest of the lunch period on the verge of sleep before the bell roused me with a near heart attack.

“Amy, you all right?” a friend teased.  “Or did the suitcase win?”

“Amy, zero.  Suitcase dream, almost a TKO,” I said.

“You really need to get some sleep before you get sick.”

“I don’t get sick.  It’s against the rules of the house.  Mothers and oldest daughters aren’t allowed to get sick.”

“You’re mom broke that rule first.”

“Okay,” I laugh.  “Bad example.  But I’ll be all right.  So long as I don’t have any more suitcase dreams.  First I have to get through science.”

Physics was actually good and I survived the rest of the day.  My physics teacher deciding to let us use the rest of her chemistry experiments was probably the reason I stayed awake.  When I got home my zombie-like family seemed to be doing better.  Why they all had to get the flu while I avoided it just didn’t seem fair.  Maybe I should rephrase that.  I didn’t want to get sick, but I would have appreciated it if just one other person was healthy.

             It was a good evening, for the most part.  Most of the soup stayed inside the people, the youngest seemed more miserable or at least they complained the loudest.  Still, my guess was that most would be well enough to go back to school either tomorrow or the next day.  I might not have been my mother, but I think I did pretty good with taking care of five siblings and an adult.  Reality wasn’t that bad, but part of me still wanted to chase a dream.