"Trick up a tree."

This phrase was somewhat of a refrain in my dream last night. Do your dreams ever have phrases repeated at intervals? In one dream I had "There is no finding the lost souls or the lost great." ("The lost great," in this case, consisted of the Shakespeare's sisters of history).

Anyway, in last night's dream, I heard the expression "Trick up a tree." I remembered hearing old men in my family say it, and I got excited and thought, no one uses that old southern expression anymore! I'll have to reinsert it into circulation.

"Trick up a tree" was used in reference to a particularly cruel joke or sad irony. "Trick up a tree," the old man would say ruefully, clucking his tongue and shaking his head. In the actual dream, I told myself that I'd have to Google "trick up a tree" when I woke up. So I did, and it actually is not an old southern metaphorical reference to a cruel joke or sad irony, but merely a skateboarding trick. Though, I suppose, the phrase could also be used to describe Christmas tree decoration.

In another dream, one I had a couple of weeks ago, I got a batch of papers from one of my first-year composition classes, and they had given their papers titles that were intended to upset me, but they only ended up slightly amusing me. A couple of examples included "Stupid Vomit Paper" and "Dumb Snot Boogers Paper."