I often have crazy dreams. So does Ralf. So we amuse ourselves in the mornings with telling each other the great stories of the night before.
Perhaps because of my excitement to see 2012, I have been having a couple of rounds of apocalyptic dreaming. The night before, I’d dreamed that the world was coming to an end and people were running and screaming through the streets. But there was a chance, too, that people could be saved so we all had to act and pack fast.
But I was with my family back in Suffolk, Virginia and the old timers were simply not going anywhere fast. We were in one of those rooms that old folks love to hang out in. At least, old people in my family. The floor wasn’t too clean, dust hung in the air like smoke in a old bar, and a circle of old relatives of my grandmother’s generation sat around in a circle talking about, well, family gossip, while people went screaming past the door with their hastily packed stuff and kids in tow.
Somehow, having managed to convinced my mother of the urgency of the matter, we set off … but not, my mother insisted, until we could buy new luggage. And because my mother never pays full price for anything, we were next in a parking lot where some enterprising person was selling cheap plastic luggage out of the trunk of his/her car.
Of course, I was arguing. At this point, explosions are going off all around us and people are running for their lives. My mother wasn’t going to be rushed from her bargain.
