I don't like to think

Now, I've never been a big dream person, mostly because I never really recall them. Every few years I have the snake dream, where I relive in my sleep the snake that chased me when I was 7 or 8 when I stepped off the deck at our cabin. The grown ups yelling "RUN" and my dad and grandad beating the ground behind me with their fishing rods. I never much had any use for snakes after that, except as handbags and belts.

And there's once or twice dreaming I never finished all my college courses and am a fraud, soon to be found out. This was improved on by dreaming a variation on that theme: that the biology lab I was late to that one time as a sophomore I really didn't get credit for, and the school called to tell me my degree was invalid and they only just figured it out (10 years later).

Then there's the one where I would look in the mirror and my teeth would fall out one by one in a perfect arc into the sink. Pedestal sink. With an antique mirror above it. This was sufficiently disturbing enough that when I had it for the 3rd time I looked this one up. It meant I had something to say that I was keeping bottled up - the teeth falling out symbolized expressing myself - although in my family it could have just meant periodontic disease.

Oh and there was the one about falling. Call me crazy, but I kind of liked that one.

And now this.

Two weeks ago I awoke and recalled a most bizarre dream. It went something like this:

Someone gave me a baby. As in, "here, would you like one? That's good then, off you go." Yes, I said a newborn, infant, dependent, helpless baby.

I left the baby everywhere. In the cold. Outdoors. I vaguely recall going outside and on all fours looking inside a large metal box and retrieving said baby from the box. Where I left it. Of course, I didn't dream the actual leaving of, only the retrieving and knowing I left it.

I forgot to feed the baby.

All the while, I was traveling to who knows where by a wagon drawn by horses. I recognized the road I was on, it was the road from my hometown to the state capital, at the point where the road curves to the right and then goes up and down several small hills and the state troopers can wait out of site on the road that runs between the northbound 2 lanes and the southbound 2 lanes.

Traveling by wagon, drawn by horses, on the road to the state capital, in the moonlight. With a newborn. In the cold.

At the end of the dream (day?) I ended up sitting on a sofa in front of the fire, and someone came in from outdoors with a small bundle and said, "you left this outside".

Where did this come from?

I don't like to think.