Suspendered Sentence

We are at the midway point of featuring a dream-a-day for the month of January. If we could compress an entire month into a single day, it would be noon—lunch time. I'm reading your dreams over a bowl full of noodles with kimchi, or a steaming platter of gnocchi in marinara sauce, and it's no wonder that dreams of food attract my fancy. I've been trying to keep the geography of these dreams dispersed, but so many of you have sent in dreams from Providence, Rhode Island that I think we need to take a few off the shelf. This one's from Sara:

So. I had a dream just the other night that I was my teenage self (awkward and self-conscious), hanging out with a group of friends (also teenagers) on the sidewalk in front of a Polish Recreation Center. We were goofing around, just generally loitering, when an old friend of mine walked up to me, and took my hand. He then asked me to marry him. I shrugged, and said "okay." We walked into the rec. center, still holding hands, and got ourselves some very large potato pierogies to eat. We walked around the rec. center, eating our pierogies, looked at all this different gymnastic equipment, jumped around on a big mat, like a trampoline, and then discovered a photobooth machine. We got really excited to get our pictures taken and jumped down from the mat and ran over to the photobooth, but a big, old man wearing suspenders stepped in front of us just as we were about to get in to the booth, pierogies still in hand. He started yelling at us that we couldn't get our pictures taken, that we weren't allowed to use the photobooth and we got into a screaming match with him. That's when I woke up.

Sara, I hate it when that happens. Why does "the man" always try to bust our music? You were having such a nice time! Yeah, it was awkward at first with you making a life commitment on the fly like that, but it seemed like things would be okay. You both managed to respect tradition—ethnospecific or otherwise—by indulging in your own manner of making it fun without making fun of it. You settled into the furnishings of society and claimed them for yourselves, bouncing and rolling around on them in your own way. All of this nourished you and it was delicious. Then when you wanted to capture this moment, to make it permanent as if burned onto a quaint four-paneled strip of photographic paper, Mr. Suspenders put his effing foot down and ruined your whole shebazz. What is this, junior high detention? Can't he see that y'all are adults? I mean, yeah you were loitering outside the establishment for a minute there and then just came in for the food and to jump on gym mats, but you are here now, doing stuff like getting married and shaping your own future—a different future than being some old grump with his pants pulled up to his nipples. Why can't throwbacks like Mr. Suspenders understand you and let you do what you wanna do?

Sara, I find so much delight in this dream—not the crappy ending, but where it was headed. And yes, it made me hungry. I ran out to my local food co-op and looked for a book of Polish recipies, but they didn't have one, so instead I picked up The Lowfat Jewish Vegetarian Cookbook. Boring title, exciting recipes. Sara, there is no better way to feel secure in one's space and to shape one's own future than to indulge in the craft of cookery. I'll be making a Turkish tangerine salad, Polish apple blintzes with mushroom-walnut paté, plus peppers and okra stuffed with apricots and almonts, spiced with Hungarian paprika. You might want to take at crack at making some pierogies. You can invite all your friends over and carry the steaming pot full of pierogies out to the nearest photobooth. Pile inside—all of you—and get your pictures taken eating the pierogies. Then send the photos to 31 Dreamers.