Thursday, September 30, 2004

I was sitting at my gramma's kitchen table with a bowl of cheerios. I poured heated water over my cheerios and watched them rise up the rim of the bowl. I sat and persistently stirred them, trying to get them to soften but they remained rock hard. They wouldn't even crumble between the bowl and my spoon. In despair, I thought the water into milk and instantly, the cheerios disintegrated into a lump of grainy meal. While I was swirling the cheerio paste with my spoon, my gramma came home from church. Without even acknowledging me, she ran to the sink and looked out the window over the sink into the living room. The TV was on, Judge Lochner. I didn't turn it on. The living room was dark but the sound was so loud. My gramma frantically started to chop vegetables in the sink. The chopped pieces of vegetables clogged the drain and gramma panicked, desperately trying to chop and clear the drain at the same time. Suddenly, the dishwasher was in the middle of the kitchen and my gramma couldn't get past because my mom's shoes were in the way. Oh, the problems that life presents us. Mom, restless, sleeps and then goes to work.

I'm in a playground, dressed in a tattered prom dress. The kids scream and chase each other around me but the sound is distant. All I can see is a group of teenagers in front of me. The man doesn't have a date but he knows who he wants. So he wades through the kids to a dress sitting on the slide and declares that if he wears a dress he will get the date he wants. I follow as the group goes shopping at the mall. The decor has changed since I was there last and I felt in a daze. My head loomed above my body.

The man is swinging. I am pushing him from behind and his friends show up with a skirt and several tops. It was all they could find. The skirt is cute and he looks good in it but the tops are hideous. But I am on the swing, pulling on a purple sleepless tube top. It looks better on than off. I pull it off and put on a shirt with only a square of silver fabric on the front and plastic wires around my shoulders to hold it on. The shirt flaps in the breeze from the swing.

GS has a cigar and drinks. Another woman is trying to get the shirt off the man. I am suddenly ten years younger and get off the swings. Two girls from my past are swimming in a maze of a turtle wading pool. Beth peeks over the turtle and Jess swims in a circle. I say, "want to be friends?" We swim around the pool while the sun moves from North to South.

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