\u201cI had a nightmare for you last night,\u201d declared my husband George first thing one morning before rising from bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d I rolled towards him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou had just bought more timeshares,\u201d he said with a smirk on his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat would definitely be something to scream about,\u201d I said, because screaming is what I do. George routinely reports that I scream during the night. If he wakes me up to reassure me, I may remember the dream that brought it on. But when he doesn\u2019t awaken me, I have no idea the next morning why it was a rough night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The nightmares I remember often have to do with someone chasing or hurting me while I struggle to get away. But this dream that George had on my behalf\u2014well, it was a first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou bought three million dollars-worth of timeshare points\u2026\u201d He pointed an accusing finger at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThree million<\/strong>?\u201d My mouth dropped open as I tried to wrap my mind around a number that large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYes. And you were upset and embarrassed about it.\u201d He smiled and nodded knowingly. He was enjoying this far too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell\u2026did I try to hide what I had done?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo. You were sitting at the kitchen table looking at the contracts.\u201d He slowly eased himself to a sitting position on the side of the bed, then even more slowly, stood, his right hand grasping his bad hip. \u201cYou told me about it, and how you put it all on a credit card,\u201d he added, shrugging, and hobbled to the bathroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least I\u2019m honest. But I really would need to be demented to ever acquire anything timeshare-related. True, we do enjoy using the timeshares passed to us from my parents. But I dislike those companies because they talked my dad into buying two timeshares after my mother died, even though he was barely using the four he already owned. Who does that to a seventy-eight-year-old man who is obviously in cognitive decline? The timeshare vultures know how to choose their prey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we open ourselves up for it. When checking in at one of our timeshare locations, we always sign up for the meeting they urge on us\u2014what they refer to as an update on our ownership. They\u2019ll offer at least a fifty-dollar gift card as incentive. We figure sitting through a one- to two-hour presentation is worth the cost of a free dinner. But the presentation is not really an update; it\u2019s an effort to sell more timeshares\u2014and my father fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n George\u2019s nightmare could be an ominous suggestion that the same thing might happen to us, that we\u2019ll fall for the sales pitch. So that settles it. I will not agree to participate in any more of their meetings, regardless of the amount of money they offer. And we\u2019ll need to enter that\u00a0other\u00a0<\/em>nightmare\u2014the one involving the sale of our timeshares\u2014before either of us slips into dementia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI had a nightmare for you last night,\u201d declared my husband George first thing one morning before rising from bed. \u201cWhat?\u201d I rolled towards him. \u201cYou had just bought more timeshares,\u201d he said with a smirk on his face. \u201cThat would definitely be something to scream about,\u201d I said, because screaming is what I do. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}