Twenty! Twenty! Ha!

I had a weird dream. A vivid crazy-weird dream.

My wife and I were staying at somebody's house. There was an older couple who were vaguely parental, but they weren't exactly my parents or in-laws. There was another couple who were vaguely sibling-ish, but they weren't exactly my sister or my wife's brother. There were also two kids who seemed to belong to the other young couple. We were all staying in one room.

A closet door opened. Every toy and stuffed animal in the closet suddenly bounced out and started shouting "Whoo-Hoo!" There was much joyous noise. Well, from the toys, anyway. Us humans were pretty annoyed.

We kept trying to round up all the toys and push them back into the closet. The toys were ready to party, though.

The "Dancing" Elmo-ish doll kept boogie-ing like there was no tomorrow. The Spelling toy kept leaping up in my face and shouting, "Dee! Oh! Are! Kay!" And strangest of all, there was a "Predict how many children you will have" doll.

I don't know how I knew what this doll was. As I said, it was a pretty weird dream. The doll was harmless but apparently broken, because he kept leaping up in front of everybody and shouting "Twenty! Twenty! Ha!"

He was the first toy in my holy crusade on troublemakers that I tried to stuff back into the closet. I didn't want anybody to get any ideas. But every time I'd jam him in there, I'd go for another toy and he'd bounce right back out again. "Twenty! Twenty! Ha!"

What was really weird was the way we all seemed to respond to him. It was like we were all afraid we'd let him down. "Twenty? Really? I mean, wow... that's a little unrealistic. I'm terribly sorry." Nobody wanted to hurt the doll's feelings.

Unrealistic or not, I'd hate to see a doll cry.