The Tornado Returns

Yet another tornado dream. Not sure what chaos or change is on its way with this dream, but I’ll log it anyway.

I am in a hotel at a meeting in Louisiana. Yes, Louisiana, but it does not look like New Orleans, so I’m not sure where it is. It is a fairly large hotel, and I am there for a business conference. We are in a conference room milling around the snack tables during break. One entire wall of the room is windows, and I can see that a storm is coming in from the north (so I guess the windows are facing north). I can also see in the clouds rotation, and, sure enough, I see a funnel start to snake down.

I turn and there is one of my former teachers (the nun!) and I tell her about the funnel cloud. “Shouldn’t we do something?” I ask. I seem to assume in the dream that she is in charge (because she is a nun?). “Shouldn’t we tell people about the tornado?” I don’t understand why the sirens aren’t going off, and I don’t understand why no one else is concerned when there is a freaking tornado heading right for us!

She just seems to sneer at me and is very condescending. I don’t remember exactly what she said but the gist of it was that I was being silly and to be quiet and stop making a ruckus.

I am exasperated that she is not taking me seriously. Why I don’t announce to the room that there is a tornado, I don’t know, but maybe I thought if they were so damn dense they couldn’t see a freaking tornado heading right for us  that they deserved to get sucked up for a little joy ride.

To my right is a girl with long dark hair. I grab her hand and say “Come on. We’ve got to get to a lower floor.” She does not want to go; she is preoccupied with the food and drinks on the table. But I am insistent and won’t let go of her hand and tug her out, protesting, into the corridor.

Now, I have no idea who this girl is, but I seem to know her and I seem to feel responsible for her so I keep pulling on her hand and nudging her to the stair well. She is chatting away irritably because she wanted the food and drinks on the table. I keep trying to get through to her that there is a freaking tornado heading right for us but it’s like talking to a child.

I manage to get her down the stairs and onto the second floor of the building but she won’t go any lower. She walks into a large suite and I walk over to the window and sure enough there is the damn tornado, still heading right for us. I try to convince her that the second floor still isn’t safe; we need to be on the first floor or even better in a basement, but now she has moved from irritability to anger because she has stayed in this suite before. She keeps going on and on that the management had claimed she had gone through all the booze in the bar but “I never touched it!” she says indignantly.

I keep trying to calm her down and coax her out of the room, but she won’t let it go.

“They charged me hundreds of dollars!” she said. “Look!” She pulls up out of thin air a map of the hotel and touches the suite that we are in and it starts to glow red. “Here!” she yells. “Here is the room. The very room we’re in! This is where they claimed I drank all the booze but I never did! I want it on record! FOR POSTERITY. I NEVER DRANK THE BOOZE.”

At this point, I am thinking “you doth protest too much” since she was pretty damn obsessed with the food and wine in the conference room, but for some reason I still feel compelled to try to get her somewhere safe. I take her hand again and try to tug her to the door but she pulls away. She is in a full-on tirade FOR POSTERITY DAMN IT and I can’t get through to her. I run back to the window. The tornado is still coming. We’ve got a couple of minutes tops. Do I try to talk her down? Do I stay with her and try to minimize damage when the tornado hits? Or do I leave?

I wish I could say I did the heroic thing and stayed, but I didn’t. I left. As I walked through the door to find the stairs to the basement, I remember thinking “Some people just don’t want to be saved.” And then I woke up.