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Apr. 19th, 2007 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elucrehI pulled my third-in-a-row all-nighter last night (and, exhausted, accomplished basically nothing) and when I finally got home I was forced to give myself permission to take a nap. Which basically means this paper is irretrievably late, and also it will probably suck because I'm still hideously exhausted and can't process anything.
The streets are incredibly icy, you can't even walk without slipping, and there's been a school bus crash, and I'm driving by and stop to help. The other kids are kind of a blur, but one of my favorite little sibling sets are there: B (3) and C (20ish months.)
They're sitting in the snow, B's arm around C's shoulders, and I walk over and ask if they're all right. B starts to nod, but then C sort of gasps and shudders and B says "uh-oh, he's having an Episode" and you can, I swear, hear the capital letter in this kid's tiny voice. "Do you know what to do?" I ask. "Hold him, but not too tight, don't stop him from doing what his body needs to."
"That's right," the bus driver says, coming up behind me. Throughout the following speech he morphs from John Sheppard to Rodney McKay and back again. "Good job remembering, B. It's a congenital condition, Miss, he can't cry or make any sounds. When he gets stressed he "screams" inside his body, which means he'll hold his breath and have some rather violent bowel movements. If it's a bad one he'll--yep, there he goes..."
I look down at the kid in my arms, who is bright red and rigid and has just put his hands into his (well-toothed) mouth and is biting down on his fingers. I make a noise and go to take them out, but B says, "No! You have to let him." I look at him, then at the bus driver in appeal, but he's nodding. "He does this when it's a bad one." I check out C's hands, and sure enough they're covered with scars and half-healed little rings of bloody toothmarks.
Abruptly, I'm their mother (but, you know, me, not in the body of their actual mother) and I'm running towards them across the street, where they're being held by the person I was a second ago (who was apparently Mr. Poole from early Sabrina the Teenage Witch.) I'm running, but it's icy, and as I slide towards them they vanish. I run back to my car and drive to the hospital and run into the emergency room where Mr. Poole has changed into (or maybe handed the kids off to) John again. He is sitting with Brandon beside him and an enormous vending machine next to them. (Somewhere in the story he fed me was him stopping to pick up or steal or something this vending machine, because they wouldn't take the kid or let him be in the emergency room, but when he brought in a vending machine they would. Yeah, I don't know.) I go off into extended Molly mode, raging, and abruptly I'm the one taking care of the kids again and their mom is in front of me, tearing me a new one. (Hah. She's the sweetest person ever, she would never do that. Her kid once fell against a corner table and hit just the right places to make him cry blood and I swear to God she was the one reasssuring me.)
Abruptly mom turns and runs out of the waiting room down a hospital corridor. B has conveniently vanished (in the dream, it felt as though I had left him somewhere before coming to the hospital, not like he had run off or anything) and since I'm on my own I chase after her. (The vending machine lumbers after me. Apparently it is now a sentient and walking on its corners vending machine.)
I find her in a room like our own toddler room, and she's sprawled across the matts, hysterically snivelling. I go over and touch her shoulder, and she looks up at me with big eyes just like B does when he's crying, begging me to make it okay, and I wake up.
So. Wow. A kid who holds his breath and has diarrhoea and bites his own hands hard enough to draw blood when he's stressed? Pretty obvious symbology.
And then I turn into their mother, who was angry and frightened that she couldn't protect them, and given my sister's most recent horrific Thing In Her Life, that symbology's pretty clear as well.
Mostly at this point I'm just wondering about the vending machine, although I have a frightening idea that I'm subconsciously convinced that my parents won't care for me unless I have commercial value, so to speak--that the fact that I am, metaphorically, so stressed I'm biting my own hands, won't matter because I've also failed.
I still got nothin' on the part where it turns into a vending machine from the Brave Little Toaster and starts following me around.
Amusing, however, that even my SUBCONSCIOUS JOHN SHEPPARD gives positive reinforcement to preschoolers.
If anyone has any further ideas as to what the hell is going on in my head, please feel free to drop a line in a comments box.
Oh, I forgot: before I saw the bus crash, when it was still a pleasant dream, there were man-sized muppets working peacefully alongside ordinary citizens, and I waved at them as I drove by and in my head it was just like, "Oh, there's Betty." Most of them were dressed as pirates. Anyone got any ideas?
Yeah, that nap was very restful. /sarcasm
The streets are incredibly icy, you can't even walk without slipping, and there's been a school bus crash, and I'm driving by and stop to help. The other kids are kind of a blur, but one of my favorite little sibling sets are there: B (3) and C (20ish months.)
They're sitting in the snow, B's arm around C's shoulders, and I walk over and ask if they're all right. B starts to nod, but then C sort of gasps and shudders and B says "uh-oh, he's having an Episode" and you can, I swear, hear the capital letter in this kid's tiny voice. "Do you know what to do?" I ask. "Hold him, but not too tight, don't stop him from doing what his body needs to."
"That's right," the bus driver says, coming up behind me. Throughout the following speech he morphs from John Sheppard to Rodney McKay and back again. "Good job remembering, B. It's a congenital condition, Miss, he can't cry or make any sounds. When he gets stressed he "screams" inside his body, which means he'll hold his breath and have some rather violent bowel movements. If it's a bad one he'll--yep, there he goes..."
I look down at the kid in my arms, who is bright red and rigid and has just put his hands into his (well-toothed) mouth and is biting down on his fingers. I make a noise and go to take them out, but B says, "No! You have to let him." I look at him, then at the bus driver in appeal, but he's nodding. "He does this when it's a bad one." I check out C's hands, and sure enough they're covered with scars and half-healed little rings of bloody toothmarks.
Abruptly, I'm their mother (but, you know, me, not in the body of their actual mother) and I'm running towards them across the street, where they're being held by the person I was a second ago (who was apparently Mr. Poole from early Sabrina the Teenage Witch.) I'm running, but it's icy, and as I slide towards them they vanish. I run back to my car and drive to the hospital and run into the emergency room where Mr. Poole has changed into (or maybe handed the kids off to) John again. He is sitting with Brandon beside him and an enormous vending machine next to them. (Somewhere in the story he fed me was him stopping to pick up or steal or something this vending machine, because they wouldn't take the kid or let him be in the emergency room, but when he brought in a vending machine they would. Yeah, I don't know.) I go off into extended Molly mode, raging, and abruptly I'm the one taking care of the kids again and their mom is in front of me, tearing me a new one. (Hah. She's the sweetest person ever, she would never do that. Her kid once fell against a corner table and hit just the right places to make him cry blood and I swear to God she was the one reasssuring me.)
Abruptly mom turns and runs out of the waiting room down a hospital corridor. B has conveniently vanished (in the dream, it felt as though I had left him somewhere before coming to the hospital, not like he had run off or anything) and since I'm on my own I chase after her. (The vending machine lumbers after me. Apparently it is now a sentient and walking on its corners vending machine.)
I find her in a room like our own toddler room, and she's sprawled across the matts, hysterically snivelling. I go over and touch her shoulder, and she looks up at me with big eyes just like B does when he's crying, begging me to make it okay, and I wake up.
So. Wow. A kid who holds his breath and has diarrhoea and bites his own hands hard enough to draw blood when he's stressed? Pretty obvious symbology.
And then I turn into their mother, who was angry and frightened that she couldn't protect them, and given my sister's most recent horrific Thing In Her Life, that symbology's pretty clear as well.
Mostly at this point I'm just wondering about the vending machine, although I have a frightening idea that I'm subconsciously convinced that my parents won't care for me unless I have commercial value, so to speak--that the fact that I am, metaphorically, so stressed I'm biting my own hands, won't matter because I've also failed.
I still got nothin' on the part where it turns into a vending machine from the Brave Little Toaster and starts following me around.
Amusing, however, that even my SUBCONSCIOUS JOHN SHEPPARD gives positive reinforcement to preschoolers.
If anyone has any further ideas as to what the hell is going on in my head, please feel free to drop a line in a comments box.
Oh, I forgot: before I saw the bus crash, when it was still a pleasant dream, there were man-sized muppets working peacefully alongside ordinary citizens, and I waved at them as I drove by and in my head it was just like, "Oh, there's Betty." Most of them were dressed as pirates. Anyone got any ideas?
Yeah, that nap was very restful. /sarcasm
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Date: 2007-04-20 06:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 11:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 04:54 pm (UTC)