Wealth & Poverty

Last night, I had a very disjointed dream that seemed to jump from one scene and topic to another.

It started out with Robert and I walking at night. There was another couple walking a little way behind us, and Robert seemed to think they were dangerous, so we moved into the shadows where the street lights didn't penetrate the darkness as well and continued walking, hoping they couldn't see us.

As we walked, the neighborhood became more and more run-down and ominous. We saw a supermarket, well lit up, and I thought maybe we should walk over to it and go inside. In front of the supermarket's parking lot, there was a little circle of large stones where a bunch of teenage boys were sitting. Instead of avoiding them as I thought we should, Robert decided we would be safer joining them.

Once we got closer to them, I realized they were all wearing light blue tuxedoes. I wondered if they had just come from a prom (and if so, where were their dates?) or if they were in a band or something. We sat on one of the stones beside them, and Robert started up some idle chitchat with the boys. In the meantime, the couple we were trying to avoid passed us by and continued walking.

At this time, we noticed that beside the supermarket was a hotel. It was very elegant and probably expensive, but we were too far from home to be able to walk home before morning, so we decided to stay at the hotel for the night. When we checked in, the concierge gave us a special deal on the price because it was after midnight already. He kept eyeing me up, and although he seemed nice enough, he made me a little uncomfortable because he was acting overly flirtatious.

I mentioned to Robert within the concierges's hearing that I would have liked to go to the supermarket and buy food for a stir-fry if only we had a way of cooking it. The concierge immediately told us that he could loan us a wok from the kitchen to cook with in our room as long as we made sure to return it at the end of our stay. So Robert went to the store to buy chicken and vegetables for our stir-fry while I got settled into our room.

I decided to take a quick shower. The bathroom was massive and beautiful. Everything about the hotel screamed of wealth and extravagence. When I got out of the shower, I got dressed in the bathroom. When I left the bathroom, I found that the entire room had been ransacked and things were missing. We had not brought much with us, so the things that were missing belonged to the hotel. Robert got back from the store just then, and that's when I realized that the wok had been stolen.

We called down to the lobby and a female employee came up to our room. She told us that ours wasn't the only room that had this happen. I was cold, and my coat was missing, so I pulled one of the blankets off of the bed and draped it around myself.

Robert and I went out into the hallway and found richly dressed people milling about. Everyone was in an uproar over the thefts. It seemed as if every room had been burgled and ransacked. Many of the women were wearing expensive jewelry and soft furs and, like the hotel, their appearance just screamed of money. Being robbed was clearly nothing they had experienced before and certainly had not expected here in this luxurious hotel for the wealthy.

As we walked down the hallway, we overheard snatches of conversation from many of the people around us. From what we heard, we came to understand that a fundraiser had been in progress and many of the hotel's patrons were here by invitation from a charity for their charity event.

I needed the toilet, so I excused myself from Robert and entered into one of the public restrooms off of the hallway. When I entered the bathroom stall, I heard squeaking and scratching noises. Within moments, rats started showing up from all over. I lifted my feet and finished quickly, so I could escape. As I left the stall, I kicked one of the rats out of my way. Some of the rats were really big! I still had the blanket around me but I shrugged it off with the fear that a rat might grab onto it.

When I washed my hands, I noticed in the mirror that there was a wall-mounted wide-screen tv on the wall behind me. I turned to view the program on and it was all about the charity event that the hotel was hosting. The charity sent people to a third world country to help out in many different areas that help was needed in. What was being shown was a group of teenage volunteers who had been sent over to help in a hospital that had an overabundance of newborn babies who were orphaned. In order for these malnourished and under-cared-for newborns to flourish, they needed physical contact early in life, but there were not enough people for that, so these teenagers were sent over to spend weeks holding, cuddling and otherwise caring for these tiny babies.

The teenagers were each holding a tiny newborn baby and talking about the experience. My thought was, "It's probably a good thing that I am not over there doing this, because I would want to take every single baby home with me and raise them all as my own!"

I kicked another rat out of the way and left the bathroom. The female hotel employee who had come to our room earlier was in the hallway and walked us both back to our room. In the room, she showed us a brand new, all-white, leather recliner. She told us it was ours to keep as an apology for the inconvenience we had been through and because the staff all liked us. (I had no idea why the staff liked us so much!) I had no idea how we would get the thing home with us, and wondered if they'd be insulted if we left it with the hotel.

Robert and I helped the hotel staff clean up the mess created by the burglars. We moved furniture back into place and tidied up not just our room but other rooms as well. It felt good to be helping out. I wondered how our kids were doing without us.

And then I woke up.

As a side note: Despite the rats being wild rats in my dream, if I encountered rats in real life, it would be highly unlikely for me to kick them out of my way as I hate the idea of violence to animals, but in the dream, the rats were very threatening.