Dream a little dream with me about dirty laundry
By Burton W. Cole
Last night I had this dream that longtime friends stopped by my place. While I chatted with Jim, Gina pulled a couple laundry baskets from the closet and sorted my dirty clothes conveniently piled on the floor.
“I was just about to get that,” I said after she finished.
Not even Dream Burt believed that one.
A short while later, I awoke to discover my clothes scattered on the floor.
I called Gina. “Why did you throw my laundry back on the floor after you had it all sorted and separated for the washing machine?”
“Huh?”
“I thought you were going to wash, dry and fold my clothes.”
“You must be dreaming,” she snapped.
I blinked. She was right. I had been.
Other people dream of great wealth, awesome power, influence and maybe a dozen or so gold records.
My hopes and dreams are that someone will air out my dirty laundry — all the way to the washer and dryer, and then to my closet.
Have you ever had one of those dreams that was so real that you’re depressed for the rest of the day?
To be fair, I’ve never been exactly jubilant hanging out at the Laundromat.
I’ve been suffering through a lot of tough dreams lately. A couple weeks ago, I dreamt that I was Donny Osmond — the 1972 version, when we both were both 13. Except that he had better hair, better teeth and girls who were actually interested in him. I think the same attributes apply now with both of us in our mid-60s.
Donny didn’t do my laundry.
A friend once said that if you dream the same dream three times, it’s a message from God that that very thing is about to happen. The laundry dream only happened once, but on multiple occasions I dreamed that I was athletic and dunked a basketball.
The basketball dream has yet to happen in real life. In fact, the last time I tried a simple layup, I couldn’t even reach the backboard anymore. My vertical leap cannot overcome my center of gravity, which is largely bunched and bundled about my belt-line.
These dreams can seem so real.
My wife, Terry, once woke up furious in the middle of the night: “I told you the GPS was wrong. But you kept driving. Right into the ocean. In my car! You wouldn’t even stop to ask the starfish for directions like I asked you to.”
“Well, see, it was… wait. What?”
“The starfish. In my dream.”
I sat up. “You’re angry about something you dreamed I did?”
“You shouldn’t drive into the ocean. Not in my car, anyway.”
I actually apologized for my actions she literally dreamed up.
“Thank you,” Terry said.
She kissed me and went back to sleep.
Secondhand nightmares are the worst. You’re in trouble for something you didn’t do. It was hilarious — until it happened to me.
I dreamed that she had stepped on me, possibly with Donny Osmond on a hot date to the Laundromat. I woke up in a foul mood. I refused to speak to her until noon.
“The car in the ocean doesn’t seem so silly anymore, does it?” she chided.
“You two didn’t even wash my gym shorts,” I snarled. “They were still on the floor when I woke up.”
Oddly, now that Terry has passed away, she never shows up in my dreams.
I supposed because she was my real-life dream girl, my falling asleep dreams can’t improve on that.
Instead, Daydream Terry perches on my shoulder and whispers admonitions in my ear, much like Jiminy Cricket:
“A science project is growing in the sink. It’s about time you did dishes.”
“Really? Oreos for breakfast? Again?”
It’s not nagging. It’s called coaching. That’s what Daydream Terry told me.
Then she said, “Pick up those clothes. What are you waiting for, Donny Osmond to do your laundry?”
Jim and Gina, actually. But I guess that was just a pipe dream, too.
As Aerosmith sang back when I was in junior high school, “Dream On.” And get thee to the Laundromat.
Dream a little dream with Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.