Night of November 29, 1968. Friday.
This is the original title and has remained so all these many years. I had entitled this as such due to there already being a story I was familiar with called “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (However, the Wikipedia entry is entitled “The Ant and the Grasshopper” - a variation I had never heard of before). This dream was one of many at a very early age that was very vivid and unforgettable in scenery and “momentum”. I am not even “in” this one. It is more like I am floating and viewing things in another world. This is one I have decided to look at again in a meticulous way. I guess it is one of those “old favorites” in a way.
Firstly, there is an ant named “Susannah” (a slight variation of my wife’s name interestingly enough but pronounced without the “zhu” and “zha” sound although I did call her by that name at times), possibly influenced by the Stephen Foster song. In the song, there is the line “The sun so hot I froze to death” and the grasshopper in the original story will supposedly starve in the winter or possibly freeze to death.
This was a long dream, but I only summarized the main scenes originally - the rest is lost to history. It involves the female ant being “courted” romantically and secretly in a “jungle” - or rather, an area with more grass and stones and such, a fair distance from her “condo”. The female ant’s younger brothers were like composites of three Hot Stuffs and Huey, Dewey, and Louie - but with ant features. The scenes were not that cartoon-like at times, but rather like an animated painting. The ants seem to live in a scaled-down condominium rather than an anthill though, so it is kind of funny. There was also some sort of implied practical joke routine related to “condominium pandemonium”. I was not even quite sure what the words meant. I do not think I heard this exact term in real life, or maybe it had been a newspaper headline or some such.
Her rather mean-looking brothers do not want her involved with the grasshopper or any chance for a “mixed marriage” (which is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose, as I have been technically in a mixed marriage all these years - which is hilarious as one person thought we were brother and sister). It is funny how a young child can pick up on the “disapproval” of such - or at least the young subconscious does, apparently.
The main, most vivid scene has an interesting meeting between the female ant and the grasshopper (and note a play on my first name - I was actually called “Clodhopper” in real life for a short time by at least two classmates as well as “Kadiddlehopper”) and a play on what I am fairly certain I did not read or hear until later. However, to be fair, I do not consider it that strange, though it was a play that did not carry the gist of the actual joke and was much more serious in context.
I can sense or hear a sort of romantic music playing. The grasshopper offers his love a rose. She accepts it but then says “Thank you, but I like dandelions much better”. There is not much drama after this. I am not certain what happens, but I do know the three brothers will be bothersome to both the sister ant and their grasshopper brother-in-law for a long time.
The actual real-life joke has a couple variations, but only one relevant to the “reverse” of the “romantic” scene from my dream. A teacher asks a child what her favorite flower is and she says “dandelion”. The teacher asks “Can you spell that?” and the child says, “Actually, I like roses much better”.
