I went out on a mother-daughter outing to an aquarium of sorts. We were allowed to swim with the marine life, which the aquarium staff claimed were all perfectly tame. Yeah right. The moment my mom climbed into the pool, the water churned and turned an oily black around her. I only had brief glimpses of fins and flippers through the murky chaos seeking to pull her under. The aquarium employee dove in, wrestling blindly with the creature. He drove it off long enough for my mom to resurface and swim to the side where I hauled her out. A second later, the employee joined us, gasping for air.
It turned out that a ravenous ink shark had been recently introduced to the aquarium. Someone's head surely rolled for that mistake, but I didn't worry too much about that. I was more concerned with my mom, who'd gone into a semi-catatonic state from the experience. She needed an indefinite leave of absence from her job, which according to dream logic was managing a bridal store for Greek weddings.
During this leave of absence, the other women working in the store competed bitterly to see who would take over the shop. They jumped on every opportunity to make a dress or a cake or specialty banners saying "Opa!" I was disgusted by the women's lack of concern for my mom, whom I visited frequently at the resort stationed in the backroom of the shop. One day, she looked out her window and saw a bunch of gorillas playing rugby crossed with soccer on a field painted like a basketball court. When I came into her room to say hello, I didn't see her. When I looked out the window, I saw a gorilla grabbing her and jumping up and down angrily to get her to let go of the ball she'd grabbed.
Somehow I got her out of the gorilla area and they went back to their game. I recall scolding her for an hour: "You're trying to recover from an animal attack! Why would you go out in the middle of the gorillas? Don't you know they're like Wookiees? Let them play however they want!" etc.
As I left my visit and went through the shop again, I saw the mother of a friend of mine trying on wedding dressed. This encounter was strange for two reasons: 1. She's Puerto Rican , not Greek; 2. She had shrunk by two feet. However, I wrote it off as cultural differences and decided to hang out with her and my friend for the rest of the day.
As the three of us went to her car in the parking garage, we saw three punk-looking teenagers trying to break in to it. Rather than shooing them off, we carefully opened the hatch of the car and climbed into the back without them noticing. We then waited. The punks finally broke into the car, rummaged around in the front seats, turned to search the back, saw us smiling at them, and froze. They then carefully put everything back, closed the doors, and walked stiffly away.
However, we didn't leave it at that. My friend's mom grabbed a bag of Rice Krispie Treats that she had come close to squishing while hiding in the back, and walked up to the punks before they could get too far away. "Do you want some food?" she called out. The punks turned, eyes bursting with confusing, fear, and shame in turns. Finally, a particularly lanky girl asked, "Wat'cha got?" as coolly as she could muster. When they saw the treats, they agreed to join us, so we all sat in a circle on the cold cement floor and shared the snacks. The punks seemed wary at first, but as we introduced ourselves and talked a bit, they began to relax. Finally, the lanky girl caved and asked, "What's the catch? Why're you doin' this?"
"No catch. We just wanted to show God's love to other people," the mom replied, sincerity written on every inch of her.
We actually proceeded to share the gospel with the punks, who seemed quite interested. By the end of the dream, they were agreeing to go to church with us and actually telling us their real names as opposed to the fake ones they gave early on in the conversation. It was perhaps the best religious/spiritual discussion I never had.
Yes. This. Good.
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