Chuckle #400 | March 31st, 2010
Dream or Nightmare?
My Mother-in-Law Surfs & Picasso won't do Laundry
I have a dream. To be honest, it’s more of a recurring abstract nightmare. It goes something like this. A giant unfolded pile of laundry sits in the middle of my bed. I want to go to sleep, but I can’t because of the pile. But what really makes this dream a nightmare, are the body parts.
A hand rises up from the pile and waves at me. The scene is realistically surreal for someone who barely studied art in college. When I start to dig, I uncover my daughter, who calmly climbs out of the pile, says “thanks mom”, and walks away. I yell after her, “Why do you have only one eyeball?” The lips on the back of her head don’t bother to answer.
Then Picasso comes out of my closet, wanders over and says “really?” in what I perceive to be a sarcastic tone, but that might just be Picasso. He sets up an easel and begins to paint. I ignore him. I prefer Dali, even in my dreams.
I try my best to fold, but the pile keeps growing - an unstoppable exponential incoming tide of shirts and underwear. Clothes begin to fall off the sides of the bed and spread across the floor. The pile slowly forces me out of the room and down the stairs.
I find myself standing outside my house while ash covered panties shoot Vesuvius-like from the chimney. If I’m lucky, in 400 years my body will be found preserved beneath a layer of cheap synthetic undergarments. My remains will be famous.
As I contemplate my own ironic demise (I am NOT wearing my best underwear), my mother-in-law surfs out the front door on a wave of unmatched socks. She hops off her board and exclaims, “Gee that was fun! Can I come back next week and do it again?”
I reply, “It’s not always like this, really.” But she knows I’m fibbing because I own 14 laundry baskets. “By the way,” I continue, “we’re having chicken for dinner.” Then her body separates into parts that float like bubbles around the yard. I cup my hands to my mouth (which is, fortuitously, still attached to my face) and yell up at the house, “Knock it off Picasso, you’re freaking me out!”
Then from somewhere deep inside the house, the dog barks. And I wake up.
At this point, you and I are probably wondering the same thing. Where exactly was my husband in this Dali-esque dreamscape? I’d like to think that he was fixing dinner for his mother, or was at the very least, putting her back together. If he was lurking at the bottom of the laundry pile, then this dream requires a Freudian interpretation. And we'll leave it at that.
As for me, I’ve got to stop folding clothes right before I go to bed. AND get rid of all those pretentious “coffee table” art books. Especially that Andy Warhol one, or the next dream could get really weird.
