Dream: The Blue Worms

Dream 20020901, 11:30 AM:

I’m at a school. I get the impression that it’s a middle or elementary school where one of my friends teaches. I don’t remember what we do there, only what happens when I’m about to leave.

I go to the bathroom, and it’s full of little kids. I look around to see if there are special stalls for the grown-ups, but I don’t see any. I try to get to the urinal, which is a long trough-style thing, but the wall behind it is too close, and I can’t get up to it without bumping into kids. I say something about how the space is really tight, and I wait until they move on and then go.

I am in a cafeteria room with my friend, who is clearing tables. Apparently she has some sort of duty where she has to do this. The room is long and narrow, and only holds a couple of small tables on each side of the center aisle; it’s not like a cafeteria very much at all. She is picking up the trays, and dumping the food into a trash can that she carries with her as she moves along. She says something about “Do you want to feed the lizard?” and I think that she is asking if I want to eat. I tell her that I probably can’t eat any of this food. She looks at the tray she’s clearing, and she thinks that I thought she was suggesting we eat the remains from the kids’ plates. She makes a face, and explains: it’s a name for something the kids are all doing, you rub someone on the stomach, and it makes them need to pee. It’s supposed to be funny. One of her teacher friends comes up and does it to me, and I think it’s irritating, but doesn’t make me need to pee at all. I do it right back to her, and she makes a double-take face, bends over like she suddenly has to go *real* bad, and waddles off toward the restroom.

I walk out the back door of the school, and there is a kid hanging in a harness from a tall crane. I know that this was meaningful to something that happened earlier in the dream, but I don’t know what. He’s above a special roped-off area of the parking lot. The parking lot now looks like Kingwood High School where I went to school. I say something to him, and he answers, but I don’t know what we said. I walk on, looking for my car. I can’t seem to find it. Mark Parker from the Turtle Creek Chorale is also out here looking for his car, and I tell him that I can’t find mine, and ask if he can give me a ride if I can’t find it at all. I eventually find it, but it is parked on a little side street around the corner from the parking lot; it looks like a little street in rural Kansas, with brush and fields and a fence against the side. The car has the keys in the door, and when I open the door, it is running. I make remarks to myself about how stupid I was to leave it parked all the way out here with the keys in the door and running. The logical conflict of this doesn’t register to me at the time.

I realize that I have to take a building home with me. It looks about the size of a small porta-potty, but it is made of corrugated aluminum. It seems to get smaller as I try to deal with it. I finally decide that the only way to transport it is on top of the car, and I put towels and a blanket that I find in the trunk on top of the car, so that it won’t scratch, then I put a strap through the windows to hold it on. I am tired and feeling grumpy, and I don’t want to wrangle the building on to the top of the car, and so I decide to use my magic powers. I point at the building, and then at the car, and there is a soft “click” and then the building just moves into place atop the car. I think how much easier that was, and am pleased that I remembered that I could do it that way. I magically open the trunk lock, too; I think that one was just to see if I could.

I start to drive home. I realize that the direction I’m going is not back to the main road, but should cut through. I come to a crossroad, and head in the right direction to get home. I stop and talk to some women who are sitting and standing around in the front yard of a small house; I don’t know why I stopped, but it was like a garage sale or something. I talk to them for a while, but don’t remember what we talk about. I have a drink or something that I need to get rid of, and I start to pour it into the lawn, but then I notice that there is a grate covering a culvert, and I can see down into a ditch with water in it. There are little pale-beige colored snake-like things swimming around in there – they swirl around in little circles. They are about the size of a DeKay snake, but very pale, almost as if they were translucent. They have bright dots of white along their sides. I ask one of the ladies if she knows what they are, because I’m fascinated with them. She takes a look at it, but explains that the glare on the top of the water often keeps her from seeing what’s underneath the surface. She also tells me, “You know that’s a drain?” like she’s trying to warn me in case I thought it was a natural water source. One of the younger women comes up, and tells me they’re probably blue worms. I start describing them in detail, and they shift – at first, they look exactly like little snakes except that their heads are smaller, but then as I look at them more, they have branches extending from the sides with things that look like roots sweeping back from them. I am trying to explain the shape of them, and I say that they have these branches sticking out, and the girl says that they should be sticking straight out, and I see a TV antenna on top of somebody’s house and point to it, indicating that the shape of them is like that. She nods. They have also changed color somewhat – instead of being a creamy beige, they are now more of a yellow root color. They remind me somewhat of brine shrimp.

I ask the girl if they’re good for anything. She looks thoughtful for a little while, and then she says that some people put them in blue cheese salads, but you have to color them first. I have an image of them colored blue, sitting on top of a salad. It’s a weird image. I think that I reach my hands down and touch one, and feel it squirm against my hand.

I get back in my car, and head onward. I drive in the direction of home. I notice some big rocks beside the road, and I think to myself that the country here is a lot like a different area – I relate it to some place in particular when I think of it (San Antonio? Austin?) but the name didn’t stick. It has to do with the number and shape of the big limestone rocks. After a while, I notice that the road is gone, and I’m cutting across fields with ruts worn in them. There is a truck a ways ahead of me, and I am keeping an eye on where he goes to make sure I don’t get lost. The track becomes less and less distinct as we continue. *end*