Protective Parent

So today this lady calls into work and launches into all these random questions and lunatic rantings before I could even finish saying "hello." It turns out that her daughter is engaged to be married to some guy from Africa, and the "phone lady" is obviously less than pleased. According to the phone lady, her daughter is quite the "hot ticket" so why would her daughter settle for a guy who will probably end up being nothing more than a shoe salesman? Furthermore, the phone lady told me, she is not going to be able to attend her daughter's wedding because it's happening in Boston and she can't possibly leave Grantsville, Utah for a place as far away as Boston. And how is it that the African is supposedly a college graduate with an MBA--and yet he still doesn't know that he is supposed to capitalize the first letter of "Ithaca" (NY)?. . . and what, you might wonder, do any of these rantings and ravings have to do with BYU Admissions? I have no clue, but I sure got an earful. I wonder if that is how my mother will feel about my future husband . . . not likely.

Sweet Dreams

My mom hates it when people go into great detail about the dreams they have. I think this is because dreams are often extremely convoluted and confusing--with the mixture of times, places, experiences, and people that are completely unrelated. Usually the dream hardly makes sense to the person who had it--let alone all the unsuspecting listeners who get roped into hearing the detailed explanation of it. As a result, in our family we grew up with the "rule" that if you were going to tell about your dream, you had to do it in 2 sentences or less. Although I can understand the logic of the rule (and I am the first to admit that it has saved me from some pretty boring conversations)--I can't help but feel differently about the rule when it applies to my dreams--but then again, I'm pretty sure everyone feels that way. I occasionally have dreams that are so strange, awful, or wonderful that I wake up almost believing them. It is especially strange when they include people who I interact with constantly--and then when I see those people I have altered feelings towards them all because of a dream. Maybe I should adopt the tactic a guy I know used the other night: just come straight out and tell them. (He told me that he dreamt that we got married.) Usually in the telling of the dream, it sounds so ridiculous that it quickly brings you back to reality--which is what happened when this guy told me about his marriage dream. We were able to laugh and there were no weird feelings between us. But by using this tactic, I fear that I'm back to the problem at hand--how can I possibly describe a convoluted, confusing dream in two sentences or less?