UNCLE MUMBLES SAY

dream from a short afternoon nap

January 27, 2012

In my dream I was a blond boy! I was with my mother and she wasn’t paying much attention to me. She was busy with her work as the president of the WQBR, which I assumed was a radio station. I followed her one night when she was going to work. She ended up at a mall and went up a few escalators to an incongruously placed bar. I wasn’t worried that she would be mad at me for following her because I knew she couldn’t see me.

There were four men – dressed in butch Americana costumes – hanging around there. One of them went in the back room and the other three broke out into song.  Although they replaced the explicit lyrics with words that were familiar to me (like “Gen Ed,” and “credit”), it was clear that the songs they were singing had homoerotic undertones. Things were going great until one of them shouted “Look! It’s gone!” He was pointing to a space on the wall where a large poster was clearly missing. My mother was missing too.

I stumbled out of the mall and onto the side of the dark highway; I suppose I had walked on my way there, too. I caught up with my mother and walked behind her. I couldn’t tell if she had the poster. Was this how she did business? Before long we saw a swarm of headlights in the distance. A fleet of white, sleek police scooters raced up to us in formation like this:

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They loaded her on the back of a scooter and started driving off in the direction they came. I shouted “Hey can I get a ride?” But to no avail. I noticed a man with shoulder-length hair and a green canvas jacket following behind the scooter my mother was on.

I walked up the next off-ramp, crossed to the west side of the highway, and found myself in the commercial area of a vibrant, ethnic village. Then the man with the green jacket started to shoot wildly. Oh right, this must be my father! People ran up the street (above and parallel to the highway) and some were falling. Many, including myself, ducked under and between rows of parked cars. It was quiet for a few moments before a large explosion rocked the ground. Apparently he brought grenades to blow up the cars and the people taking shelter under them. One grenade, two grenades, three grenades: my grenade. Ouch my back is burning!

I thought I was done for but then I knew that I was not. I peeked out the front of my hiding place, which faced the highway. On the ramp below I could see the shooter in a green BMW doing donuts on it. A sweet rescue worker in an old-fashioned nurse’s uniform bent down and spotted me under the car. “Another one down in the oil here.” she said. With some effort, I put my arms out in front of me and she pulled me out. “This one’s not hurt too bad!”