Dreams

I have vivid and weird dreams.  Sometimes my dreams are so memorable that I find myself wishing there was some sort of technology that would allow you to record your dreams to share with others.  At least that way I could prove I wasn't making them up!

Often my dreams will cross into my waking state.  There is, for example, my sister's favourite story of the time I dreamed that my phone was a bomb and I tried to diffuse it by sitting on it... only made more hilarious by the fact that my phone was a pickle phone.

And my husband will eagerly recount for you the times I have talked aloud through my dreams, begging him to try my lasagna, or to look at the hundreds of spiders crawling on the floor, or describing someone standing in the corner.  I feel badly for him because it seems to me that most of the dreams that seem to trigger this half awake/half asleep thing are pretty creepy or scary!  And if you know Ken, you know that he doesn't sleep well once he's been good and creeped out.  Please click here for a refresher.

Most of my dreams, though, seem to be completely not linked to reality... at all.  I have a theory that it's because I sleep on my arm a lot.  I often wake up with a numb hand, and I read in a journal once that if your blood flow is interrupted during sleep, that your dreams will be more vivid and colourful.  I have elected to extend that theory to include "less bound by laws of time and space", "more insecty", and "more shape shifty".

I have had dreams where I was a time traveller, where I could jump on a trampoline right up to outer space, where I was a black and white cartoon character and I could speak French, where I was a centaur in the 1500s (no comments from anyone who knows about THAT little gem!) and many, many more.

My last really weird one was about me going to the movies.  The theatre was unique in that any time someone needed to go get a snack or use the washroom, they would "pause" the movie.  I thought this was fantastic because I needed to go do some errands!  So, I jumped up, they paused the movie, and I headed off up the street to do some shopping, of course.  As I was walking, an old lady kept pestering me, trying to get me to give her money.  The more I resisted, the more she lunged at me.

I know that this dream sounds like pretty basic stuff, but they usually do start out pretty normal.

Anyway, I turned to look at her, when suddenly this giant glob of earwax shoots out of her ear and onto my arm and it turns into this baby scorpion.  I freaked out and threw it back at her.  When it landed on her, it scuttled quickly back into her ear.  I walked away, thinking about my errands, and when I grabbed my purse with my pincher and unzipped it, I suddenly realized that I had turned into a scorpion.  By the way - I now know that my pinchers would technically have been called pedipalps... because I looked it up... because that is what I am all about.... Googling EV-ER-Y-THING.

So, I kind of freaked out, and figured I should get away from this old lady much faster, and I strapped on my speed skates and I tucked one of my pedipalps behind my back and I swung the other pedipalp like a pro back and forth as I leaned low and forward and pumped my legs in time with my pedipalps (I really like this new word!).  I was gaining speed and suddenly I felt alive!  Like I knew I was meant to do this for my entire life!  Well, I guess the Olympic talent scout agreed, because I suddenly looked to my right, and there was a man skating beside me, flashing his Olympics ID card, talking to me as I skated.  He said that there would be no need for me to go through the normal qualifying process - that if I was willing, I could represent Canada as the only female scorpion speed skater from North America.

It was all happening so fast... first I was at the movies and now I would be competing in Sochi, Russia!  I, of course, jumped at the opportunity, and headed back to the movies, where they started up the film again, as if nothing had happened.

I could honestly fill a book with stuff like this.  Most of them don't phase me all that much.  I wake up, shake my head, think, "what the hell?" and then just carry on.  But some of them are completely terrifying.  Those ones often follow a theme of constantly trying to get away from something.  Sometimes it is a city full of tornadoes, and I just keep running from building to building trying to stay alive. Sometimes I'm in a house, and every time I look at a window, something terrifying is looking in at me, and I lunge and close the drapes, only to turn around and see that thing looking at me through another window.  I did have a terrifying one this week about this strange couple trying to kill me, but they were kind of crappy assassins.  For example, instead of cutting the brake lines on my car, they would just rig the car so that it kind of had a soft tire, or a dragging muffler, and I would have to try to drive the car to the mechanics, and on my route to the garage, they would put together these elaborate obstacles that would slow me down or stop me in hopes that I would be trapped in my car, too afraid to come out and face them, and that I would eventually starve to death.  While I was dreaming this, it was completely and utterly frightening, but when I woke up, it seemed so laughable.  :-)

And then there are the flying dreams!  Aren't they the absolute best?!  It is so easy for me to fly in my dreams.  All I have to do is take a few running steps and then jump so that I am parallel to the ground and I just have to flap my arms to get a little height and then I am good to soar!  It is so disappointing to wake up from those ones, but the feeling of flying is so worth it!

I really should try to write some of these down.  I tend to remember the ones that I share with people, but if I don't manage to tell someone about it within a few minutes of waking up, the dream just sort of crumbles to dust, in a way, and I never seem to be able to remember more than a fleeting moment of it later in the day.  I suppose I could jot some of them down here, as long as they don't reveal too, too much about my psyche.  :-)

The bottom line, though, is that I am simply astounded at what the human brain can do while it's sleeping.  I honestly could not make up the stuff I dream about if I tried, but for now I am happy to be a confused observer of my sub-conscious once my heavy eyelids shut for the night.

I wonder what I'l dream about tonight?  And for goodness sake, someone please tell me that they have absurd dreams too!  :-)