This is the dream I had last night.
I was talking to a lady who had several kids, and she was telling me about an outing they’d had recently.
“The kids had been bugging me forever to take them to the zoo, but I just don’t believe in that kind of thing. All those poor animals, you know? I said we could go to the beach instead, but they didn’t want the beach. They wanted the zoo. And they kept bugging me and bugging me. All their friends were going to the zoo. The zoo was cool. The zoo, this and that. That was all they wanted, just one trip to the zoo.
“In a moment of insanity I called up that amusement park, you know, Adventureland*? I told them, if you will send someone out and pay to take my kids to the zoo and the beach, you can bring whatever you want and put whatever kinds of advertising you want on my kids. I’ve got five kids, you know, and they make a lot of noise, they get a lot of attention.
“And you know what’s so crazy? They did it! They sent two people out, a guy and a lady, and they put an Adventureland t-shirt on each of the kids, each one a different color, and an Adventureland backpack, and they gave them each a whole bunch of Adventureland balloons, which of course the kids loved, and they drank Adventureland sodas and ate Adventureland snacks, and went to the zoo and the beach and all over town to get hamburgers and ice cream afterward. It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen, and probably the most ridiculous thing anyone else had ever seen, because I saw a lot of people staring and pointing. Those Adventureland guys got a ton of great advertising, and the kids had the time of their lives, and it didn’t cost me a dime.”
I was a little shocked at the way she’d sold out her kids for a free trip to a place she didn’t approve of anyway. I didn’t want to say anything, but she must have seen it in my face.
“Oh yeah,” she said, “I know. I totally sold out my kids, not that they care. They’ve been begging me to call up Adventureland so they can do it again. I told them it was a one-time deal, and then they said, ‘So call the zoo next time!’ Hah! Fat chance. I certainly won’t ever do it again. I never really thought Adventureland would do it in the first place. But they kids’ve had a day they’ll never forget, and we all had a free outing.”
“Wait,” I said. “You went too?”
“Of course I did! You think I would let my kids go running around town with some people I don’t even know? Yeah, I went too. It was the first all-day outing I‘d had with my kids in a while, and I guess we‘ll have another one soon. The Adventureland people gave us all free passes to go there. I haven‘t told my kids yet because if they know we‘ve got those passes they won‘t leave me alone till we go.”
She hesitated.
“But I think we’ll go next weekend. I have to tell you, that was the best time I’d had in a long time. And to be one hundred percent honest, the zoo was pretty amazing. I was prepared not to like it, but I did. It was totally better than the beach.”
*I made this up. I don’t think the amusement park in my dream actually had a name, but it reads better if there’s a name to it.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
that’s pretty amusing
Funny that you have this rationale for another person in your own dream. And what an idea! It sort of makes sense. If I were a kid and saw some kids who had all kinds of gear from some place and the kids were obviously having fun, I’d probably want the same thing too. Your brain sounds like a confusing place to navigate. Dreaming up things like this and you do things like throw out random themed puns on the fly too. 🙂
Re: that's pretty amusing
Hehe. I like my brain… it is full of things. But yes, it does get confusing. Actually sometimes these days I feel like I have a separate brain for each of the projects I do, and they just float around and it can be hard to pin one down. In other words, it’s hard to focus. ;b
Re: that’s pretty amusing
O and yeah, I woke up and thought, “This was so weird. And yet it does make a strange kind of sense, and for kids it would just be plain awesome. I must write this down.”
hm
i wonder if this would work in real life. it kind of makes sense! your dreams sound very nice…when i get really crazy dreams, they are usually weird sci-fi or dramatic mafiaesque ones. have i told you about the dream i had about my friend steven and his family? very strange.
Re: hm
Hmm, don’t remember. My dreams are usually pretty nice. They are vivid and full of strange sensory details and events. And the more I write fiction, the more complete their story line gets… or maybe I just remember stories better. 🙂 My dreams used to be more fragmented (the “and then I did this, and then this turned into this, and then this person turned into Obama/Voldemort/my cat” type), for sure.
I have a sudden craving for ricotta cheese pasta. Sigh. None to be had, and it would probably give me gas.