The Tea Shop Dream

As I do every morning, I set the scale in the middle of the bathroom floor and graced it with my touch. It rewarded me with disappointment. Not like that dream I had, though! That wasn’t disappointing at all. I had to tell someone about it! Luckily, I had a captive audience.

“Last night I dreamed I owned a tea shop!” I said to my husband, conveniently cornered in the shower.

“Hmm,” Matt said over the sound of running water.

I sat on the edge of the bathroom counter and combed my hair. “Yeah, it was great! We sold fabulous organic loose leaf tea and people could buy the tea leaves or they could drink it there…”

“Sounds nice.”

“Only I had a huge problem with squirrels, 'cause, like, they wanted the tea...”

“Squirrels?”

“Not to drink, though. The loose tea, because of all the delicious nuts and herbs in it. So the shop was constantly besieged by this army of squirrels and it was really bad for business.”

“I’m sure.”

“But then one day I noticed that the squirrels had trouble with the raw tea because some of the nuts were really hard on their teeth, and so I told the commander of the squirrel army—,”

“Ooh, boy...”

“Did you say something?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm. Anyway, I told him, ‘You know, those would be softer if you brewed them first. And by the way, have you ever actually HAD tea?’ And it turns out, squirrels really like tea—I mean, to drink—but also the brewing thing worked well for their teeth.”

“How nice for them.”

“Then I started an exchange program where people could bring in their used tea leaves! The squirrels bought the used tea (cheaply, because squirrels don't have a lot of money), and the people who brought in the used tea got a discount on their future tea purchases, and everyone was happy!”

In the shower, the water flowed steadily. I might have heard sighing. “I love you, my little psychopath. Please don't kill me,” Matt said.

I scoffed at his attitude. “It's not crazy! It makes sense!”

“No, it's totally crazy.”

“Also,” I said, getting to the best part, “the squirrels would eat right out of my hand and that was awesome.”

“That’s great,” Matt said, turning the water off and snagging the towel from the bar on the wall.

As he slipped past me into the bedroom, I could tell he wasn’t impressed. Maybe it really was crazy. It had made so much sense in my sleep. I wondered what it all meant. “The dream interpretation guides probably don't have much to say about squirrels in tea shops,” I mused, taking his place in the shower.

“I'm guessing penis envy,” Matt called from the other room.

I gasped in offense. “How do you get penis envy out of squirrels in tea shops?”

Standing in the bathroom doorway so I could hear him over the running water, he said, “I’m just telling you what Freud would say.”

I sighed. Maybe I needed to find someone else to tell about my dream, I thought. Or maybe it was crazy after all.