The Locomotive

From 4/15/14 (I was re-reading archival data.)

There was a big, raggedy pile of cardboard and feathers and rags -- a huge heap.  There was a lady beside it; she had a big mop of wild grey hair and was also wrapped in brown rags.  And someone -- Lila? One of the kids? approached her and asked if she wanted to join in.  The lady looked surprised, and then pleased.  And the big pile of rags and junk started to move and shake and layers fell aside, and out puffed a giant locomotive, as big as a bear.  I thought at first it was made of cardboard, but soon became clear it wasn't.  It scooched along, accordion-ing itself forward, to and fro, sloughing off its layers and working its way out of the box / pile that had contained it.  I was dumbfounded but others around me weren't; they were pleased as they hadn't seen one of these in so many years.

The locomotive chuffed outside and turned onto the sidewalk.  It was a narrow sidewalk with a sapling planted near the curb, and I was sad because I could easily tell the locomotive was going to get stuck, there was no way it could fit.  And before my eyes, the locomotive kept chugging and shrunk down, condensed, so it could chuff easily between the tree and the building, with room to spare on the sidewalk.

The locomotive kept  having encounters with little animals, but the only one I recall clearly was the opossu.  There was an adorable baby 'possum, and the locomotive chuffed to it.  Again, I was worried, afraid he'd steamroll right over the 'possum, but instead somehow it picked it up and cradled it.  I heard someone -- I guess the lady who'd kept the lcoomotive all that time, explain that opossums had always been the locomtive's favorite.  And the 'possum grew, and then there were many of them, the cutest, tumbling-over-each-other 'possums you could imagine. 

There was some confusion as the locomotive chuffed on.  Something flying got caught in some strings & beads & birds.  Hands came in to help untangle everything and someone said, "Doesn't anyone have a light?" and a girl said, "Here!  There's a light here!" and she tossed me a pale blue compact, about the size of a Thin Mint cookie. 

I turned it over and finally realized that it had discs that could slide out and swing around, but instead of there being mirrors, as I expected, each one as a charm of some sort.  One that I opened had writing in a language I couldn't decipher, so I closed it again.  The next produced a girl, like a hologram, explaining what she could do for me.  I got freaked, closed it, and tossed it back to the girl. She laughed at me.

Tooth dream within a tooth dream

We were all staying in a big mansion – there were lots of bedrooms with adjacent bathrooms on the first floor, opposite a large ballroom and dining room.  The staircase was wide and curved, and gave a view over the ballroom, almost like a balcony, as it swept up to the second floor, where there were more suites of rooms, both large and small.

We'd come there for a party; some of us staying overnight in the suites and others just arriving for the celebration.  There were kids and grown-ups everywhere, enjoying the music and performances and food, laughing and singing.  It was a swirl of joy, and I wandered from spectacle to spectacle:   the Blue Men setting up paint-filled drums along the sweeping staircase; the tables piled high with fancy looking desserts, shiny and colorful.

When the party died down (faded away, really), I went into one of the en suite bathrooms on the first floor.  I had braces, and the wire on my back molars was uncomfortably poking my cheek, making it raw and bloody.  I looked in the mirror and tried to untwist the protruding bit of wire, but instead of just folding down the offending poking part, I removed the entire wire.  I knew right away that this wasn't going to be good, and sure enough, as I watched, my entire top row of teeth folded in, as though on hinges. 

I rushed out to the foyer, and frantically looked for someone to help.  Most of the revelers had left, and I couldn't find any friends or confidants in the dwindling crowd.  I ran to the dining room, and found a little cup, because I could feel my teeth coming loose and knew I'd need someplace to stow them.

My sister appeared, and I told her that I needed help – that we had to get in touch with my dentist and my orthodontist as soon as possible, because my teeth were all falling out.  She chuckled and said, "We're in New York – what could they possibly do for you down here?"  I urged her to call them anyway, and she did. 

Soon I'd filled the little cup with teeth and tooth fragments.  By now all the metal had been pulled off my teeth, and I left those aside.  My sister gave me a bigger bowl, and I kept feeling more teeth falling out, and spitting them into the soon-overflowing bowl.  To anyone who would listen, I said, "I told you this would happen.  I knew that this was going to happen some day.  I've been dreaming about it all my life." 

I pulled out my phone so that I could take a picture of my mouth, with the jagged nubs where teeth used to be, so that I could prove to anyone who wasn't there that I'd been right all those years, that all those tooth dreams had been prophetic, not paranoid.

Much to everyone's surprise, the dentist did turn up, with two of his assistants.  They co-opted one of the upstairs suites that had a sink, and set up a make-shift workstation.  One of the assistants applied some kind of paste to my upper gums, to take a mold.  I didn't know what they were going to do, but I didn't care – I knew they were going to help.  I asked the dentist if he'd be able to salvage anything, and pointed at the overflowing bowl of tooth fragments.  He said, "We'll check through what you've got there, to see if there's anything big enough to reuse.  Maybe the canines..."  I said, "Oh never mind – the canines were fake anyway.  Just make it all new."