Another Random Outburst

I Dreamed a Dream
by Lisa M.

This Saturday morning David and I were able to repel the kids and send them downstairs to eat breakfast (we bribed them with “marshmallow cereal,” you know the one I’m talking about). And it actually worked! they played for an hour. I productively spent that hour sleeping. I had the strangest dream.
I dreamed that I was in an unidentified, random mall with some unidentified, random friends (without kids, this really is a dream). Suddenly we all learned that the mall had been sealed off and shut out from the outside world. There was no way to get out; there was no way to get in!
Everybody in this huge mall was stuck. We didn’t know why and we didn’t know how long. And as the hours ticked by it became clear that it might be days or worse before we were rescued.
What was happening outside? Why couldn’t we see anything? War? Nuclear attack? Everyone forgot we existed?
Panic set in. People began looting and rioting.
Up to this point in my dream, I was detached, a third person viewer. But now it was time to do something. So of course I became a super hero! Suddenly, I had with me my large glass salad bowel that Vickie Sooger gave me. It became my super hero weapon of choice.
When we were rushed by teenage gangstas run amuck, I put it over my fist, where it magically stayed put. I knocked out the ruffians in one blow. Looking down from the second floor, we saw Queen Bees and Wanna Bees plundering chic boutiques. I threw my magic salad bowl at the shrieking, squealing crowd. It zoomed down dispensing justice and breaking up the melee.
Soon I and my super salad bowl had subdued the rampaging crowds. I held it up to my lips and it magnified my voice a thousand times. I used my best mama-in-charge-voice to calm the trapped, terrified multitude. I dispensed wit and wisdom to quiet the masses. “Can’t we all just get along?”
Night fell and we-my unnamed friends, the mall security and some other civic minded citizens-set up a patrol and put the mall to bed. While on my rounds I saw something! a small door the size of a window. Excitedly, I turned the knob, it opened! We were saved! Quietly, I shut the door to inform the others on patrol. We needed to do this delicately and orderly, so panic didn’t start again. I turned and started to walk away. Then the door burst open! And the Chinese communist army began to pour through the little door into the now quiet mall. Not quiet for long…
I woke up.
What happens next? Was my dream behaving like all good comic book stories giving me a cliff hanger ending? Was my dream a good comic book story? Maybe it was time to pull out my trusty salad bowl and teach those Chinese communists a thing or two. Maybe I knew I would never be able to defeat an entire army and I woke myself up.
We’ll never know.
After waking, I laid in bed thinking of my dream. A mall? Chinese communists? An army? But most of all, a large, glass SALAD BOWL? Not a magic lasso, not a super ring, no cape, no laser beam eyes, my sub conscious chose a… serving dish.
What am I trying to tell myself? Do I want to know? Perhaps my id is saying, “Evil meat-eaters beware, here comes the salad bowl of justice!” Or, “Watch out Julia Child, there’s a new girl in town!” Most likely, “You’ve spent way too much time in your house fixing dinners, Lisa, I can’t even dream up a magical power that might belong to you that doesn’t have connotations of domesticity.”
Then Emma screamed in pain and Enoch ran upstairs naked and crying (naked?). Time to get up and face life.
Lehi dreams of trees. Mary Shelley dreams of monsters. Salvador Dali dreams of melting clocks. Stephanie Meyer dreams of Romeo vampires. But Lisa Martin is… Super Ma! with her crystal salad bowl of exactness and decency!
Evil doers and chore dodgers BEWARE.