This morning I need someone who knows how to interpret dreams to help me for just a minute.
My grandmother always told me to never eat pork or spicy foods right before bed, and as always when I have disregarded her advice, I got myself in a small dilemma.
You see, on last evening I attended a dinner party at the home of a family member. Now my wife doesn’t cook much pork or pork by-products. She hardly ever brings pork in the house for that matter. But being a country boy born and raised in the South, I have a taste for pork.
Anyway, despite most occupants of that home having health issues ranging from hypertension to diabetes, pork seemed to be the main staple. They had prepared almost every part of the pig from the rooter to the darn tooter. They had prepared a big pot of greens seasoned with about fifteen ham hocks as well as roast pork shoulder, ribs, bar-b-q pigs feet, smothered pork chops, pork fricassee, sautéd pork, pork shish kabobs, pork ala mode, on and on, ad infinitum, Forrest Gump style. The whole table looked like some type of pork shrine.
So not having eaten many of these dishes for quite some time, I partook. And I was making quite the pig of myself (excuse the pun) until my bougie wife and children began to make snide remarks about the different dishes I was consuming. They were especially disgusted when I decided to try the pigs feet.
Of course I took me a plate home to have later. So right before bed, I enjoyed a couple of smothered pork chops drenched with hot sauce, and then I settled in to finish rereading Octavia Butler’s Kindred.
But at some point I drifted off to sleep, and that’s when the nightmare started. This is what I need your help with.
In my dream, I was escaping from slavery. I’m running through the woods and I could hear the dogs barking close behind me as that Roots, Kunta Kinte escapes music provided the soundtrack. You know, the bongo drums—boomp-digga-boomp-boomp, boomp-digga-boomp-boomp.
And then as I ran past a huge oak tree, someone or something hiding behind that tree catches me smooth across my face with a slab of ribs, knocking me to the forest floor. And as I lay there all dazed and confused and attempting to ascertain the identity of my attacker, I see Porky Pig sitting there in a wheelchair holding a slab of ribs, but he is missing both his feet. All that was there were two bloody nubs wrapped in gauze, and the whole time he’s screaming at me, “I told you I would get you back, didn’t I! I told you I would get you back!”. Except he was stuttering because, of course, Porky Pig stutters, right? Badly.
But anyway, I’m looking at him, shaking my head trying to regain my senses, but all I could think was “Why is he butt naked except for a little bright red bowtie and a bolero jacket? What’s up with that”.
So I’m captured and they take me to this clearing in the woods where this dining table is set up, and my grandmother begins to fill the table with all my favorite foods from my childhood until the table resembles the buffet of the previous night. But my grandmother is not smiling. She is not even looking at me. She’s wringing her hands and looking down with the saddest, most forlorn look on her face.
And I’m placed before the table, tied to a chair except my hands are free. Then the guy who seems to be in charge announces that for my punishment, I would be required to eat everything in front of me. And I’m thinking, that’s not so bad a punishment. So I say, “okay,” and turn to ask my grandmother for the hot sauce. She then blurts out, “That’s just it Max. You have to eat all this without any hot sauce!”
At that time I woke up screaming and covered in sweat.
Can someone possibly tell me the meaning of this?
