Creepy Toddlers Also Happen To Be A Specific Workplace Anxiety

I dream that I’m yelling at my sister in the living room. I look down and there’s a small toddler sitting on the table, looking at us with interest. She’s very thin and has a full head of brown hair. Her face looks serious, older than her age.

I’m told that she belongs to our neighbors’, so I pick her up and carry her to their window. They all look incredibly relieved to see her. As we talk, more and more toddlers start to appear. I realize that they are all adults being shrunken down and we’re in a Star Trek episode.


I dream that I’m at the store and there is a long line of customers standing all together. I yell that they need to social distance, they ignore me. The customer I’m serving passes me his credit card, but the reader has turned into a videogame and I don’t know how to reset it. The customer grows impatient and leaves in a huff. My cousin is so angry at me because I’m an incompetent loser.

On my way home I stop at a stationary store, I want to buy a bright yellow umbrella I saw from the window, but the guy inside says,

I’d love to give you the umbrella, bus someone else just bought it.

I’m now a Victorian girl and the umbrella I wanted was actually a book, The Count of Monte Cristo. I arrive at my cottage feeling dejected, then surprised and elated when I see someone has bought the book for me! I gather my siblings and read out aloud to them, they dissolve in giggles and “Well I never!”s

Lost Presents

We find a bunch of children’s toys hidden in a closet in hour home, they are all still packaged and rather old, hidden there since the 70s. They are all strange and ugly, there is a naked Barbie with a giant stomach: when you open it, a little blonde doll with pigtails pops out.

A neighbor gave the toys to my mom to hide until Christmas, but she died shortly after and the toys were long forgotten. We decide now we’re gonna wrap them up for that neighbor’s children.

One of her children sits next to me at school, it’s the pudgy blond boy. I show him the presents and say they are for him and his siblings. What would he like, I ask, maybe colored pencils would be useful?

He asks what I’m gonna give to his older, already adult brother, I say I’ll give the toys to his toddler son instead. He thinks for a moment and say,

The toddler is also my mother’s child, but we will never tell him.