My parents and sister and I were at some sort of clearance sale at a Wal-Mart. It was such a big clearance, in fact, that everybody got to fill up one shopping basket of stuff for free. The place was packed, merchandise was strewn all over the aisles, and people were pushing and shoving each other to get the stuff they wanted. The decor of the place was nothing like Wal-Mart's; it looked a lot like a Toys R' Us instead.
So my family and I grabbed our stuff. I remember my best find being a hardback copy of Little Women.
I was standing in one of the aisles with my parents when they informed me that they had bought a new car, and that they were going to give it to my sister.
"Why not me?" I said loudly. "I don't even have a car. It's broken, remember? And I have to be able to get back and forth to classes. Tricia can take the stupid school bus."
In reality, I have a car. But my sister, who's three years younger than I am, has a nicer one than I do. She only drives it to her high school and back. Last week, one of my dashboard wires decided to split on me, disconnecting the odometer and the speedometer. So now I have no idea how fast I'm going or how many miles past 191,722 I've traveled.
Back to the dream.
My parents looked unconcerned about my transportation predicament. They said Tricia was getting the car, and that was final. My mom said she hoped I had found a job for summer, because she had decided she wanted Tricia to work in her office over the summer.
I said I didn't have a job yet, and that I really needed the money. So that I could buy a new car. I said that Tricia didn't need the job my mom was giving her; she hated office work and could barely type.
I started crying right there in the store. I was quite open about it, too. I just stood there and sobbed and told them over and over how unfair they were being to me. Other customers kept stopping to look at me. A few of them asked if I needed help.
We left the store. My parents took my sister and me to a bookstore in another shopping center. It looked like one of the shopping centers near my parents' house that had seen its heyday before the mall moved in up the road. I was pleasantly surprised that there was an upscale bookstore in the shopping center.
My parents told my sister that she could pick out anything she wanted. I said that, once again, that wasn't fair; I'm the English major in the family, and my sister barely reads at all.
"If you want something, Laurie," my mom said, "why don't you just steal it?"
I said I would never do that, and that I couldn't believe she had suggested it. I wandered the aisles of the bookstore, looking at the books I wanted but couldn't have. I remember leaving with my family in the early evening and heading down the sidewalk to an ice cream.
There was a fuzzy transition somewhere in there, and in the next scene I was in a bathroom cutting up my right arm with a razor blade. I was whining really loudly -- just one long, loud "Waaaah!" -- in the hope that someone would hear me and ask what was wrong. I realized I was in the bathroom of the house I lived in until I was nine. I remember the cold tiles on the floor that were printed with black squares. Very 70s. It felt like home to me in the dream, though, and I didn't note anything out of the oridinary about my surroundings. The main thing was that my arm, from wrist to elbow, was a bloody mess, and it was obvious that no one was going to come and help me bandage it.
