Pratfall

I'm walking quickly down the stairs, just going from one floor to another in the house.  At the bottom is a nice polished hardwood floor.  And then my feet go out from under me, I flail, and land with a splat.  Some idiot has painted a rectangular patch of the floor, right in front of the stairs, with a thick coat of white paint.

I'm up, dripping, paint oozing into my clothes and shoes.  I look around: there aren't any signs or other warnings posted.  The painter guy is standing there in coveralls and a cap, and I look at him in angry astonishment.  "I told everyone," he says: what do you want of me?

"Like hell," I say.  "That's obviously not true."

"Okay, not everyone," he says.  Slightly abashed, mostly why-are-you-on-my-case.

I then spend a long time in the dream partially dismantling my running shoes in a sink, trying to wash the paint out of them; there's the smell of latex paint.  I realize that I need to get my clothes soaking in warm water soon if I don't want the paint to set in them.  And at this point I wake up.

And, lying in bed thinking about it: Who comes up with this stuff?  Who would think, even for a moment, of painting a nice hardwood floor with white paint, in an area right in front of a staircase?  Not to mention the lack of warning signs?

My unconscious, that's who.  Thanks, unconscious.

If this was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for the way my life is going, I don't really need that message.