Friday, May 12, 2006

Pet

I had a dream last night in which I bought a pet cockroach.

I went to pick him up at the store. In dream-land, when you buy a pet cockroach, he is given to you in a box with a little window.

I left the store and looked through the little window to gaze upon him with pride, and completely freaked out when he turned out to be a grasshopper!

Seriously. I screamed, threw the box into the air, dropped the box, causing the grasshopper to jump away and disappear. My heart rate skyrocketed and I kept screaming and screaming and screaming "I DIDN'T WANT A GRASSHOPPER! HE'S DISGUSTING!"

Right.

It all seemed so reasonable in the dream.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My parents wouldn't let us have pets, so when I was six, I adopted pet housefly and named him Norman, which was the funniest real-life name I'd ever heard.

The best part about Norman was his ubiquity. We took a family trip to New York once, and I was upset because we were leaving Norman behind. But then, when we got there, I was delighted to find that Norman, anticipating that I would feel sad without his company, had already flown ahead to meet us there!

I was a lonely child, but I used my friendship with Norman to leave my shell and forge progressively stronger relationships -- first, with the roaches that lived under my baseboard heater, and then with aphids, beetles, grasshoppers (!), and ladybugs in my backyard. In my teens, I joined a swarm of traveling locusts, who introduced me to a couple of parasites and the lower vermin, including plague rats and what would eventually become the neoconservative movement. I'm rich with friends today, but it wasn't always so. And though, I've lost touch with Norman, I do accidentally bump into him every once in a while. And when I do, I always make sure to throw a banana peel or empty soda can his way, for old times' sake.