Floppy puppy

[shunn]

Between five and six this morning, I had a pretty awful dream. I was somehow in a big grungy rusty white panel van with my family, who I guess were visiting town. Except it wasn't my family as it exists now. It was my parents circa the mid-seventies and my four youngest brothers and sisters circa the mid-eighties. My three other siblings were not around, but for some reason I was being forced to go to church with the family—a stake conference, to be precise. I didn't want to go, but there didn't seem to be a way out, and as we parked in gray dusk light near the church I realized angrily that I was going to miss meeting my friend Kevin that evening for beer (which is actually on my schedule for tonight).

The church was a strange one inside, with a chapel that was much wider than it was long, and with the congregation seated on rising auditorium-style benches looking down at the pulpit. The only door in or out was in the corner behind and to the left of the pulpit, so if I tried to leave everyone would see. As I tried to work up my courage to leave, I realized that I wasn't wearing Sunday clothes like the rest of the family. I had on white shorts and a black T-shirt with something printed on it. (Probably something obscene, I don't know.) Feeling hideously exposed, I turned to my parents and loudly announced that I was leaving and they couldn't stop me.

Outside the church, I found Ella on the porch leaning against the wall beside the door. Apparently she'd been in the van and someone had left it open. Anger surged inside me. Ella was very groggy and didn't even lick me as I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. She flopped bonelessly, like a rag doll, and somehow I knew she'd been hit by a car that pulverized her skeleton. I kicked open the door to the church and strode into the chapel bearing my dog like an accusation. "You did this to her!" I screamed.

That's when I woke up.

Gee, I don't still have any issues.

Comments

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I still have dreams about going to church too. (Although not as many as when I was first investigating the problematic history of it all.)

And I always end up screaming at people in them too. Or saying Fuck a lot.

The temple dreams (I never went except for baptisms for the dead) were always the weirdest of the lot.

[shunn.livejournal.com]

Ew, temple dreams. Creepy. I don't remember ever having had temple dreams, which is probably a blessing since (and you can be glad you never did the endowment) those dreams could have been horrific, what with the enacting of the penalties and all.

[karen-w-newton.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is pretty much a nightmare. The 70's were bad enough, even without the religious thing. How odd that Ella appeared decades before she was born. Glad you woke up and found everything OK.

[shunn.livejournal.com]

Weird thing was that I was an adult too. I think part of the dream imagery came from all the old family photos my sister is scanning and putting up on Facebook.

[karen-w-newton.livejournal.com]

That could do it. Seeing someone they way they used to look is a definite memory trigger. It is weird how our brains can reproduce a time and place but not the logic that says "This character does not belong here."