Never had the teeth dream, but I have “can’t see” dreams, where where everything is foggy and out of focus, or it’s like wearing very dark sunglasses indoors. And there’s always something I have to do or a place I have to go, but I can’t do it fast enough because I can’t see. IRL I’m incredibly nearsighted, and my rotten vision is one of the biggest frustrations in life. I guess I take it out in dreams.
My “unprepared for school” dreams have morphed into horse show dreams, where I’m entered for a class but my horse isn’t ready or I don’t know the test or course, or I can find my riding clothes and am in my underwear or something. (I never dream I’m totally naked, I wonder why?)
My other “helpless” dream is having no brakes on the car or truck, and I’m usually going in reverse. Gawd only knows what that means…
Ah, yes, the car with failing brakes. That’s another common one for me. I don’t go in reverse though.
Another recurring one is where I can’t run. No matter how hard I try, it feels like I can never hit a full stride and it’s like I’m running through molasses. Often, in these dreams, I lean down to grab the cracks between the slabs of sidewalk in order to speed myself up. IOW, I’m kind of running on all fours. Weird.
I still have these 25 years after I got out of any school. Can’t figure out my locker combination, didn’t go to class and now it’s the final, didn’t run all season and now have to run the 2 mile at a track meet, didn’t go to ballet and don’t know the dance and I’m on stage at a recital, I’m 49 and fat and have to run the 2 mile at the high school track meet, etc.
I also dream about my teeth falling out or crumbling out of my mouth.
Once you do go to grad school, you get a brand new improved version of the “back in school” dream – one where you find out that you somehow neglected to actually finish your thesis after the oral defense. That’s a fun one.
It’s always about mid-semester for me. I feel this mounting certainty that there’s a class I registered for last spring that I haven’t been attending, and I’m too embarassed to go the professor to ask if I’m in his class and explain the whole thing to him. So, I just keep putting it off, as my sense of fear and dread grows.
As often as not when I’ve had the naked dream, I get righteously indignant when people act startled or embarrassed because I’m naked. I’m all “What? What? This is normal! There’s nothing wrong here! People go around without clothes on all the time!” No matter how much I insist, though, they never seem to get it. Man, you’d think people had never had friends walk through their front door naked before. Sheesh.
Teeth crumbling? Check. These are amongst the most vivid - the ones most likely to linger after I wake (checks teeth now to make sure they’re still there). It always surprises me that this is a common dream.
Unprepared for school? Check. The strange thing is I’ve had this dream many many times but never in a school I’ve actually attended. The details are amazing - the complex route to the exam room for the class I’ve neglected to ever attend. The friggen spots on the polished floor! (just no details on the actual material I need to now have to test!) Until this thread I thought it was just me.
Naked? A few times, not recently.
Flying? Not often enough! Man these are so cool - like, I can just fly! I always could but needed to discover it! Sometimes, though, after the initial soaring flight then landing gracefully, I have trouble taking off again - a real strain of mental concentration just to get a foot off the ground.
Has anyone had this one: Toodling about my actual real-life house, everything familiar. I go to a part of the house that’s in disrepair (in the dream only, no such part exists IRL). I enter that part and there’s a wing of the house I’ve never used. Dream me knows it was there the whole time - left in its current state by the previous owners, I just never got around to doing anything in there.
Just beyond the first room, which is muck floored, leaky, and dark, there’s a door that opens to a spacious grey-brick, shag carpeted rec-room full of 70s/80s entertainment gear and furniture. Then there’s a massive library of dusty books, then a junk room with old-fashioned toys and other wonders. Tons of rooms jam packed with stuff. I think to myself, “Geez, if only I tidy things up a bit I could be using all this space, all this stuff!”
I’ve had this dream so often - and 9/10 times those rooms are the same (some rooms defy description - this labryinthine room that’s kind of a museum, kind of a corporate front office). I see these totally imaginary rooms and their contents so clearly even as I type.
Oh yes! I’ve had that dream a number of times. It’s never exactly the same rooms or layout all the time, but otherwise it’s the same dream: unused wing, old stuff from previous owners.
I had the one where I had to go back to high school again, because for some reason I didn’t actually get my diploma That one sure does make waking up to a screeching alarm clock seem more pleasant by comparison, at least…
I sometimes have ones where I find there’s a whole new part of my house that I didn’t know was there, but it’s generally not in any particular state of disrepair.
I’ve often had the flying dream, but I’m scared to fly too high or I’ll keep ascending and not be able to stop, so I’m usually just skimming a few feet from the ground. I figured a Freudian would have a field day with this, being afraid to leave Mother Earth and all that (Mother, get it? get it?) I think they’re related to nightmares I’ve had where the world is turning upside down, and the sky is now down and the ground up.
Another common dream I have is trying to dial a phone number and constantly misdialing, usually the last number. I call this a type of frustration dream, and they’re pretty common. A psychologist friend of mine thinks that it may be an artifact of the right dreaming brain trying to do something (like remember a locker combination) that’s usually handled by the “sleeping” logical left brain.
I’ve heard that the teeth falling out dream is often caused by feeling a loss of control.
Funny thing: I often have dreams in which I’ve returned to college. Sometimes I’m an undergrad again, sometimes I’ve enrolled in a (nonexistent) graduate program. But I never have law school dreams - at least, none that I remember. And I loved law school, for the most part.
Something very similar happened to a friend of mine. Thanks to a scheduling conflict, he was taking the same class as me, but as a semi-independent study; same assignments as the rest of the class, but he’d discuss them with the prof in office hours, and had to do an extra paper on top of the term paper and final exam.
The problem was, my friend didn’t understand that he had to do two papers (extra paper and term paper), as well as the final. So, he showed up to the final exam, handed the prof one paper, and the professor said something like, “Thank you - but where is your term paper?”
“Term paper? Prof, this is a final-exam class.”
“There’s also a term paper.”
“Professor, are you messing with me?”
“No.”
Slowly dawning horror. Then the poor guy had to sit for the exam.
I’ve never had any of these dreams, but after reading these threads and introducing the themes to my subconscious, I’m fully prepared to show up naked for a final exam while my teeth fall out tonight.
My recurring dream like that is the opposite - I’m trying to get the car to go faster, and it just…won’t…go…
I’ve had a variation of that dream occasionally - going to a house and finding all these extra rooms and secret passageways and stuff. That is usually a very cool dream.
That happens to me, except it’s my legs and I’m trying to run.
Sounds like a dream but it’s a real story: My last semester of my senior year of college I took Appreciation of Architecture as a free elective. The grade was based in equal parts on a midterm, a final, and a project. I had a B on the midterm and an A on the project. I skipped the last day of class because I had a job interview. A week later was finals week. The night before the exam, I was studying for the test and pulled out all the course materials. I reviewed the syllabus, and there, at the bottom of the syllabus, in fine print, it said, “The final exam will be held on the last day of class.” I called the prof the next morning and told him what happened, but he would not make an exception. Instead of averaging the letter grades and giving me a C, he averaged the numerical scores (0 for the final) and failed me. I could not graduate. Thank you Kingsbury Marzolf.
Post script: My employer said their offer was still good as long as I made up the elective during the summer semester. I took History of Music, which I could have taught, and got an A+.
I have both the “can’t see” and “no brakes” dreams frequently as well. And I, too, am terribly nearsighted.
The weirdest thing about being naked (or at least incompletely dressed) in dreams is that nobody else ever seems to notice or think it’s a big deal.
eta: And the “can’t run” dream too, definitely. Also “can’t punch” if I’m trying to defend myself from an attacker. I throw the hardest punch I can, and it lands like a feather.
A new twist on the “unprepared” dream: I’m waiting for my final stage of immigration to be complete, and I dreamed that I forgot to send in a very important time-sensitive document. In the dream it was for someone else who was about to be deported because of it, but it’s pretty obvious where that anxiety is coming from. Fortunately, I did send in that document – or rather, the responsibility for sending it in was in the hands of another agency. Wait, that’s not a comforting thought…
One time I was trapped in a cave in a situation that seemed impossible so I tried a trick recommended on this message board: try to shoot flames out of your hands. If you can, then it’s a dream. So I tried that in the dream, but my hands didn’t exist! That woke me up at least.
I’ve gotten a new variant where I’m re-enrolled in college and move back into my old off-campus apartment. I expect to find people I knew there but it’s been 30+ years so no one knows me, making me feel completely lost.
I have all of these, but the driving one is the most distressing. Frequently I’m driving up a overpass/bridge and it just gets steeper and narrower until I’m just barely hanging on. Sometimes I have to reach out the window and grab a guardrail with my hands to keep the car on the road. I’ve fallen out of bed a couple of times because of this.
Does anyone have the buffet dream? I’ll be at a large, fancy buffet, with all different kinds of food, but things aren’t grouped together. Like there’ll be pasta in one section, but then all the sauces are on the other side of the room. I’m looking at everything and trying to decide what I want, but when I finally settle on something, by the time I go back to put it on my plate, it’s either gone, or they’re closing down. Anyone? Just me?
That one sure does make waking up to a screeching alarm clock seem more pleasant by comparison, at least…
Fortunately, I did send in that document – or rather, the responsibility for sending it in was in the hands of another agency. Wait, that’s not a comforting thought…