I wouldn’t Dream Of Being This Irresponsible! Or…Would I?

Last Updated on: 26th June 2021, 03:32 pm

In some of my dreams, like the ones where I’m coming up with new tech ideas or predicting the future, I like to think I’m a genius. But in others, I think there’s a part of me that considers me to be the biggest moron on the planet. I know there are common dreams we all have about not preparing for a test or having no clothes on in public, but these take it to the next level.

The first dream like this I ever remember having was one where Steve and I were visiting a friend in another city, I think it was Ottawa but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is it was hours and hours and hours from where we were living at the time. Anyway, somehow I ended up going out shopping without Steve, and then came back to the place where we were staying. I was elated. “Look at what I got!” I proclaimed. “I got these two sugar gliders! Aren’t they cute?”

Steve was dumbfounded. “You did what? How are we going to get them home?”
“Well, I know a friend who carries sugar gliders in a pouch, so I bought a pouch. I figure we’ll just put them in there!”
“And what about when we get on the train and your pouch starts wriggling? What if they notice your wriggling pouch, say pets are not allowed and they kick us off the train? What then? Or what if, after some time, they have peed and pooped and the pouch starts to smell? It’s not a short train ride!”
“Hmmm…I hadn’t thought of that!”
“And what do they eat?”
“I don’t know!”
“They didn’t tell you what to feed them? Or how often?”
“Nope. I just figured they ate veggies or something.”
“But even hamsters can’t eat some veggies. You could poison these little guys and not even know.”
“Hmmm.”
“And how do we care for them? What kind of habitat do they need? How do we give them exercise?”
As I sat there with these cheeping sugar gliders (do sugar gliders cheep? I don’t know!) I realized what a stupid decision I had made, and didn’t know what I was going to do. We were leaving Ottawa the next day. How was I going to give them a home? Could I take them back to the store? …

I woke up actually wondering how big an idiot I could have been to do such a thing, and then realized that no, I didn’t do it. What a relief that was.

That was a dream I had years ago, but I just had another one kind of like that recently. In this one, a friend of mine had two abandoned puppies and didn’t know what she was going to do with them, so I said I’d take them off her hands and take care of them. But I just brought them home in a box and told Steve we were going to take care of them. I proceeded to go on with my life as if I hadn’t brought these two fuzzy shoe-chewing monsters into our apartment.

Then one day after a few days, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen them around the apartment, nor had I noticed Steve taking them outside or feeding them. I asked him what happened to the puppies, and he said “You didn’t seem to care about them, so I found them homes. I gave one to a neighbour, and the other one I took to the zoo.” Yes, the zoo of all places. I was suddenly appalled at Steve’s choice of neighbour because he smoked a lot, and why would the zoo take care of a puppy? And the dream ended with us arguing.

On the surface, Steve looks like a big jerk, but really, I’m the bigger one. Why did I dump these puppies on him and then not do anything to help him? And then how did I not notice the presence or absence of said puppies for days? Steve didn’t even want these puppies. I brought them home and then stuck him with them. Gees! I’m lucky he didn’t just leave me, and the puppies too!

Apparently this sticking Steve with the consequences of my actions is something Steve dreams about too. Now I’m really worried! One time, he had a dream that we were riding in our elevator and some dude got on the elevator and said he had 73 “schoompuses” with him. Don’t ask me what schoompuses are, but in this dream, they looked like little cassette tape cases. Anyway, he had these 73 schoompuses and he really needed to find them a home. But whoever took them had to keep them all together. According to Steve, without hesitating, I said “We’ll take them!”

He was in shock and said “What are we going to do with 73 schoompuses?”

“We’ll put them in our bed!” I shot back immediately.

Between gritted teeth, he said “We are not putting 73 schoompuses in our bed…”
Then the dream cut to the future, a future that has me lying in the bed while Steve is lining up schoompuses at the bottom of the bed and I’m saying “I can still fit!”

Thankfully, that’s the only dream Steve had where I’m an irresponsible human being but I have many more. Once, I had a dream that I had to move cities, and I think I was trying to move to Toronto. I’m not sure why I had to move to Toronto, but I had to do it in a hurry. I was looking for a place, and all I seemed to be caring about was the price. I found a place, and without looking at it, I accepted it.

On move-in day, I realized why it was so cheap. Not only was it small, but I had to share it with three or four other girls. They were loud, the fridge was crowded, and they all knew each other but they were all strangers to me. As mom and dad were moving me in, there was a sense of “What have you gotten yourself into?” Once, mom took me aside and said “Make sure you only use your own computer.” I said “Of course I’ll use my own computer. It’s the only one I can use.” Then mom said “You don’t understand. That other computer…I think it’s the porn computer.”

“Porn computer?”

“Yeah. It’s near a shelf by a bed, and everything’s reclined funny…just don’t touch it.”

At the end of the dream I wondered aloud where Steve would go when he moved in, at which point my parents went “Um…you were planning to have Steve live here too? That isn’t going to happen.” And I woke up panicking.

There was another dream where I bought a house. I tried to do all kinds of research, but again, I never went to it. Everyone told me it was spacious with great access to things, but neglected to tell me that the house was next to a highway, and the only access was by car. Everything I could have ever wanted was nearby, but it was across a busy highway. At the end of the dream, I had found a bus stop and went somewhere, but then couldn’t remember where I was supposed to get off the bus to go back home, and so ended up riding around on this scary bus full of drunks at 3 in the morning and didn’t know if I could ever get home again.

Then there was the dream I had years ago when I had just gotten my job and suddenly I was making more money than I had before. I had a dream that I realized I had enough money to buy a car, and I did. Only then did it hit me that was a dumb idea because I couldn’t drive it, and now I was flat broke. I certainly didn’t have *that* much money, but I guess I was worried that I would be an idiot with my newly-acquired money.

Then there’s the dream where I set off to go to Toronto. I’m not sure what I was going for, but in the dream I had an established mission. Anyway, my plans didn’t work out and I wound up lost and my phone was misbehaving. I asked a couple of random people for help and mentioned that my phone wasn’t working right. They agreed to help me fix my phone, so I handed it over. Then I noticed that they had taken out a screwdriver and had opened up my phone and I didn’t know why. The two strangers started talking, and then my phone made a weird beeping noise and one of them said “Yes! We’re in!” I realized that they weren’t going to fix my phone, but they were going to access its memory and I got it in my head they were going to drain my bank account. Somehow I got my phone back, even though it was in pieces, and ran away in a random direction. By some miracle, I came across my parents and begged them for help and then the dream was over.

The last one I can think of right now is one where I was in a job interview. I had arrived there, I had all my documents, I was nervous. Then he started to ask me what interested me about this job, and I suddenly wondered why I had applied. It was in another town, it had less pay, it was in a field that wasn’t really my thing anymore, it was a job that required me to sleep over at the place, and the list went on and on. I found myself wondering why I was even trying to apply for this job, and how I could gracefully back out.

I think that’s all of them, but they’re quite a list. Does part of me think I’m a giant fool? Or are these dreams a product of the planner part of me trying to make sure I don’t end up in a situation that’s even a small fraction as serious as one of these? Either way, they make for memorable dreams.