Cookies for Pants

Dream::

It took place in Vassar, this extremely small town in south-eastern Manitoba. A place a couple kilometers off the highway with about two dozen houses in it. And half of those with no one living in them. There is a church right in the very middle of town, a community hall where every single event always takes place, some baseball diamonds that used to bring a lot of people around back in the day, a convenience store that I have only ever seen one man work at since I was a little girl.. and a few sets of of railway tracks running right through the middle of the town, with trains loudly honking their horn and going far faster than you are used to seeing in the city. They average every couple hours, causing any conversations being had to pause for the next few minutes until words can be heard again.

So, there I was in my dream with Will Smith, and his Uncle Phil, from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In my grandpa's house (which is right beside the church) there we were in the kitchen. Someone brought forward this bag of cookies in a white paper bag that they had found in one of the rooms. I recognized them instantly, for I had baked them two years prior. Oatmeal raison. They had been sitting in a closet or in a drawer in one of the rooms this whole time, being delicious and uneaten.

Will and Phil wanted twelve of these cookies from me pretty bad. However, I really wanted at least one of them for myself, and there were only twelve left in the paper bag. Plus, they didn't have any money. The deal we settled on was that Phil was to trade me his pants for the only twelve cookies there were. As long as I found him a replacement pair of pants. There was no question about it - this was a great deal. Consider them sold.

I agreed to this because I remembered that I just happened to have an extra pair of pants (in his size) in my car that was parked in the backyard of my Aunty Karen's place. Karen's place is about a four minute walk across the back of the yard of the church from my grandpa's place. I wasn't walking though, as quick as it might have been. I jumped in a motorized buggy I had, roll-cage and all. Phil and Will jumped in their separate buggies and followed me on a quick ride over to Karen's, just down a street and around a corner.

I got to my car, parked on the lawn where other old vehicles and campers were parked, and looked in my backseat and then my trunk. I checked under both front seats. It became more and more apparent I did not have any replacement pants for Phil. Which made me a liar. Him and Will waited for me, with their buggies running on the roadside. I panicked a bit at this point. Because they had already started eating those cookies, and I had no pants for him. I made a quick dash into my Aunty Karen's house, and to no avail I found zero pants there. How could this be so hard?

The neighbours were having a garage sale. A very large, and tall garage, filled with items for sale at really cheap, garage-sale prices. The items weren't normal old VCR's, children's toys, and old china... but were actually and entirely only indoor potted plants. Fake ones, real ones, hanging ones. All indoor plants for incredibly low prices, the way garage sales were. There was no chance whatsoever of me finding pants here, never mind ones of Phil's size. I checked any ways just to be sure as the neighbours sat in their lawn chairs chatting to one another, but still keeping an eye on me as I shuffled through the plants, wary of me; making sure I wasn't going to... i don't know... walk away with a hanging plant in my back pocket without paying..???

Without telling Will or Phil what was going on, I jumped in my buggy, signalling for them to follow me back to my grandpa's. I had to break the news to Phil. As I expected, he was quite angry with me, but also had eaten all my cookies in the meanwhile. There was no way he could have gotten his pants back from me. Not anymore. Slightly upset that I couldn't follow through on my word, I went into the house. My family was there. Not everyone but random members. 

They told me not to worry. And revealed something to me about Phil in hopes of cheering me up. (Apparently he was actually a part of my family, "Uncle" Phil.) They told me that when Phil would sleep at night, instead of sleepwalking, or talking, or snoring, he had an entirely different annoying habit. Every night while asleep in his bed, he would get up right against the wall and using his thumb nail would scratch the wall all night long. It would drive whoever he was sleeping with crazy. As well as the unfortunate person in the next room. My cousin said that there was a time when he would be wide awake because of this, and so he started trying to decipher what these thumb scratches could mean. The thought was that maybe he was trying to communicate from his dreams. However, nothing that made sense was discovered from those long nights. They appeared to be gibberish,

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