I dreamed I'd been given the care of two children. They'd been abused and neglected. They were undernourished, mentally underdeveloped, and would randomly hit each other with sticks and belts. They would never look me in the eye when I tried to talk to them. Somehow someone from the future showed me their skulls. There were all sorts of healed fractures, some sort of discolored pitting caused by severe malnutrition, and one of them had a hole from an untreated cyst. On the one hand, the skulls were adult-sized, but the damage was still awful. It was my job to try to prevent their lives from being this bad.
I was trying to help ease them into a branch of their family who loved and wanted them, but was very poor, and didn't know how to cope with their behavior. Their aunt and grandmother and older brother had all cut off their poor excuse for a mother, but they all worked long hours to make ends meet. I guess I was some sort of super nanny, social worker and child psychologist all in one. I moved in with them to see to the kids. I had a breakthrough when I got them to look me in the eye and really listen when I explained that hitting each other was wrong.
But then a huge storm struck, and the lake began to rise. I looked out the back door and saw the gray, choppy water coming up the backyard. There was a huge wave far out on the lake, an I knew it would swamp the house. We had to evacuate. I put the children into an old shopping cart and started pushing them uphill, up the road, and we got separated from the rest of the family.
One of the places I ended up looking for them was a Rice baseball game being held at the New Orleans horse racing track. The family wasn't there, but a newly-single old crush of mine was, with his father an brother. They were all a bit sauced, and wanted me to stay and had a drink. When my crush tried to kiss me, I told him we could discuss this some other time when he was sober, if he wanted, but right now, he was drunk and I was in a hurry.
We finally met back up with the kids' family at a Mexican restaurant, and my boss was there. The family gave me a glowing recommendation, and showed us three numbered grocery bags that had won them a huge sweepstakes that the grocery chain had put on. They had millions of dollars now, and were going to be able to hire full time care to help with the kids, a nice new house, good food, and everything, so I was to move on to another job. Then I woke up.
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