Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes

most dreams are so short and unstable there’s no time to look for what might be valuable and figure out the best way to get it.  instead what my dad does in the wash of dreams is reach out with his special long grabber arm to try and get whatever he can before it disappears.  then if it’s no good he throws it back in the next dream and tries again. 

you knew that, right?  because sometimes you find things in your dreams that seem totally random and strange, right?  but thats just cause some dream pirates were throwing back something that wasn’t valuable.  what else could be the explanation?

this time my dad got a stack of papers.  i didn’t see how papers could be valuable, but i watched as he dumped the papers on the deck and began to sort through them.  he seemed really excited.  carefully he removed something little from one of the little stacks of papers.

“what is it?”  i asked him.

“it’s a paperclip, tenorah.  a little piece of metal wire twisted up in a way to keep papers together.”

i told him i’d seen tons of little things just like that one when i went to kindergarten.  they were on the desk of my teacher when i was climbing up on it.  i didn’t think they could be valuable if kindergarten teachers had whole boxes of them.

“they’re not rare in the real world, but to find them in dreams is very rare.  much rarer than the things we sell to make our living, like golden goblets or diamond jewlery.”   he smiled, “almost no one dreams about paperclips.”

“so why do you want them?” i asked him, ”i thought all we pirates wanted was gold and that stuff.”

“let me show you something.”  he replied, beckoning me behind him down belowdecks and into the little cabin he and mom sleep in.

dad opened a cabinet and there i saw a lion and a giraffe and a few different birds, all made of little pieces of wire just like the paperclip, only bent and twisted together to make animals.

“i only make them out of paperclips i find in dreams.”  he said, ”that’s my rule, and i stick to it.  i could go out and buy as many boxes of paperclips as i liked and make hundreds of little wire animals.  but these few i’ve made are special, because of the rule i set myself.  sometimes i give them as gifts when i meet and trade with other pirates, and because they are made only of the paperclips i’ve found in dreams the other pirates know i’m giving them something that i value, something i couldn’t make again so easily.”

my dad says that rules are important.  sometimes dream pirates like us decide we aren’t going to follow the rules other people make up, people like my kindergarten teacher.  but that just means we have to figure out for ourselves what rules are important.  it doesn’t mean we get to go without having any.