Volcanic (my dream's more dangerous than yours).

Three boys look for frogs and ducks in a creek at Columbia Springs

I had a horrible dream!
I told them.
It was awful - you - I pointed at the 2-year old - had climbed on top of a traffic light and were starting to dance on top, and I was racing over to catch you if you fell, and then you actually did fall, and I was running, and you were -

-his older brother jumped in, since my dream was apparently getting predicable and boring.
I dreamed
he said,
that umm… (he paused to plumb his dream’s memory for accuracy) - …I dreamed about rattlesnakes and tsunamis. They were huge rattlesnakes and there was a huge tsunami. Yeah. My dream had rattlesnakes and tsunamis. Giant ones.

I naively attempted to finish my story, as it had truly shaken me, and also it was true. I really did have this dream, as oppposed to fabricating a dream, as I suspected others in this storytelling party might be doing.

I was interrupted again, this time by the 2-year old, who was the falling subject of my nightmare. Apparently his inclusion in my dream wasn’t interesting enough for him to hear how it ended. He stood up and spread his arms wide.

MY DREAM,
he announced, at a decibel level roughly equivalent to standing adjacent to a mid-size military transport chopper landing on graveled bubble wrap,
WAS ABOUT - he glanced at each member of his audience to ensure he had sufficient attention - MY DREAM WAS ABOUT…RATTLESNAKES AND TSUNAMIS!!!!

There was a lull, then a storm of protest coming from a certain member of the audience which may have previously shared his dream; his stormy response was not entirely unexpected on my part.

YOU JUST COPIED MY DREAM!
he shouted, enraged. MY DREAM WAS ABOUT RATTLESNAKES AND HURRICANES!

His younger brother, wearing his favorite shirt; a blue shirt of his mum’s, lost none of his aplomb and forged ahead with fervor, spreading his arms even wider and escalating his voice to the heavens: AND MY DREAM, he announced, was about HUUUUGE RATTLESNAKES AND HURRICANES…AND VOLCANOES!

At some point, the war of words turned into a wrestling match, the intensity matched that of a thousand tiny hurricanes spewing up medium-sized moderately-venomous rattlesnakes, and the ash collected in our memories as a collective dream of dangerous matter all launched simultaneously in projectile fashion,

and out of breath, all parties collapsed on the ground, and

later, later,

some of them took themselves down for a daytime sleep. Probably to get the edge on dangerous dreams. Power move.

more posts below about Conflict