One night I had a dream. I was killing a venomous snake. It was odd because the snake had kept appearing but only as half its original form, and so on.

Finally I had enough, I guess, and I trapped the snake in a large plastic ziplock. It hissed and spit at me in the bag, but I killed it anyway. Then I asked my parents if they thought I’d regret it, animal lover that I am.

“What if it is actually a nice snake?” I asked them, regret already starting.

“Nope,” they assured me. “That is a poisonous mean one. You won’t regret it.”

I woke up wondering why I had such a specific and strange dream, and looked it up in an online dream dictionary, of course. There are a lot of things it could mean, including that someone is doing something behind your back, or you are ready to free yourself from old patterns and beliefs, or that you are rejecting toxicity in your life. Those all seem possible, I thought, and set aside my wondering for a bit.

Until my children got back into the car after seeing their dad and told me that he had been sullen.

Then they added, “He had a dream last night that he was murdered.”

And it all made sense. I tried not to laugh.
I really tried.