‘Laughing Wild’ (Man and the Father Inside a Potato)

MAN: The other night I dreamt my father was inside a baked potato. Isn’t that strange? I was very startled to see him there, and I started to be afraid other people would see where my father was, and how small he was, so I kept trying to close the baked potato, but I guess the potato was hot, cause he’d start to cry when I’d shut the baked potato, so then I didn’t know what to do. I thought of sending the whole plate back to the kitchen — tell the cook there’s a person in my baked potato — but then I felt such guilt at deserting my father that I just sat there at the table and cried. He cried too. Then the waiter brought dessert, which was devil’s food cake with mocha icing, and I ate that. Then I woke up, very hungry. I told my therapist about the dream, and he said that the baked potato represented either the womb or where I tried to put my father during the Oedipal conflict — “what Oedipal conflict?”, I always say to him, “I won, hands down.” And then my therapist said my father cried because he was unhappy, and that I dreamt about the cake because I was hungry. I think my therapist is an idiot. Maybe I should just have gurus. Or find a nutritionist. But what I’m doing now isn’t working.