Where The Wild Things Are

As a disclaimer, I do not really like to talk about dreams. Especially because telling someone about your dreams is one of the biggest conversation killers. Our dreams are often more interesting to us than they are to others, heh.

But in this rare case, I am going to talk about dreams.

I'll first start by explaining the dream, then I'll give an analysis or whatever. ;)

All right so in my dream there was me and my siblings. Only we were much younger. Natalie was about 2, which would make me 10 or so.
We were outside, kind of where LP High school is. Only the school wasn't there, it was a valley. And in the valley were elephants and buffalo.
We were just watching these animals roam about the valley. And elephants and buffalo are big animals, you know?
All of a sudden, certain kids I know are going near the animals! And they're getting picked up by elephants' trunks and getting chased by the buffalo! And I am like what are they doing?!

And some kids ask my siblings if they want to come play with the elephants & buffalo. And I answer for them---NO!
I'm holding Natalie and then I look around and I see even more animals! Not just animals, but monsters. And up from behind the mountain comes a dragon!
It sounds so dumb now, but being in a dream, feeling so small and helpless is so scary.

The rest of the dream consists of me carrying Natalie and leading the other kids somewhere away from where the wild things are. ha.
By the end of the dream, my only concern is Natalie. It ends with me carrying her, running from the monsters, and trying to call my mom on the cell phone. She doesn't answer.



So I started thinking about that dream. The biggest part I noticed was the familiarity of the dream. Growing up, I would always have crisis-like dreams involving me and my siblings. The typical dream consisted of:
-All 5 of us running from bad guys of some kind--no parents in sight.
-Randy trying to figure out how to drive so we could get away faster.
-Me trying to hold the 3 little kids and run with them.

My former teacher Ms. Mo told me that she had the same kind of dreams when she was a kid. She's the oldest of 5 too, so maybe it's an oldest child thing. I just always thought it was interesting.

The other interesting thing is how I was mainly concerned with Natalie in the dream. I read a book once called The Poisonwood Bible, and in one part, there's a chaotic scene and the mother saves her youngest daughter. Later, when an older daughter asks her why she chose to save the baby, she says that in a crisis, mothers care for their children from the bottom up.

I know they're just dreams, but they really bother me. It took me a good hour after waking up to calm down. I'm afraid they're just going to get worse when I move. That feeling of helplessness will overwhelm me. That desire and responsibility to protect my siblings will haunt me.

Maybe it always will. :-/