I used to have recurring dreams that I could jump incredibly high, but I couldn’t control my fall. When I was just about to hit the ground at a high speed that would result in certain death, I would wake up. Those dreams stopped six or seven years ago. Now my recurring dreams are about roads, just roads. I am driving on roads near where I live, but I never knew existed. The roads have never been the same. At first I got lost or forgot my destination and had retrace my route. Recently, I have begun arriving at my destination, whatever it was. I can never remember the destination, I only know that I got there. This may have something to do with my being a cartophile (map lover).
I really enjoy these dreams. I don’t know why.
I also dream about work, a lot, but it never looks like the place where I work.
YES!!! That happens too! It’s usually an emergency, but I keep messing up the numbers.
Or else I’ve signed up for a class (I’m back in college), and I realize towards the end of the semester that I completely forgot to ever attend said class, and I’m going to fail.
Shopping-I’m at the mall, and there’s a particular store I want to go to. But no matter how I try to get there, I keep getting trapped in these really crappy stores, and blocked in by displays.
I’m at a store, or a library, or just doing something I’ve been dying to do-but for some reason, I’m so tired I keep falling asleep, or I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m desparately wanting to go on, but I keep passing out.
Then there’s the one where my mother decides it’s okay to start letting the cats go outside. I beg and plead with her not to, but she doesn’t care. Similiar to that, I find out we decide to take a bunch of kittens home, and then decide which ones we want. Some of them get forgotten, and they just get lost, or disappear.
Finally, the good ones-I dream that I can fly, or I have magical powers-I can WILL myself to where I want to go, or make things move just by waving my hands. Those are always fun.
Funny, I was just thinking about starting the exact same thread the other day…
It’s funny how many people have the “going back to school/have to take the final/don’t know any of the material and skipped every class” dream, and the “teeth falling out” dream. I haven’t had either, but maybe that’s because I’m still in college. (Although I do remember having a few dreams the summer after I graduated high school where I was still in high school.)
I’ve never had the exact same dream twice, but here are the themes I’ve noticed:
1: The moon is inhabited by living creatures. In one dream, I could see orange lines on the surface which I think are channels of lava at first, but it is actually the grid layout of a gigantic alien city. In another one, the moon is actually a gigantic machine like the Death Star, built by an extinct alien race. (In that one, there was someone with me trying to convince me that there were no aliens, but I didn’t believe him.) And in another dream, there’s a US military base on the moon which is visible from Earth, and one of my friends (who is in the army in real life) is stationed there. I think I’d been playing a lot of Doom 3 at the time, that probably inspired me somewhat.
2: I’ve had lots of dreams in which I see something really cool and think “Wow, if only I had my camera and could take a picture of this!” In one dream, I have my digital camera with me and I try to take pictures (of, incidentally, some weird astronomical features on the moon) but they all come out blurry. I can never seem to capture anything with the camera. This has happened many times.
3: I’ve had 2 or 3 dreams (one just a few nights ago) in which I’m in the back seat of a car somehow trying to steer it by reaching over the front seat while the car coasts along by itself with cruise control. I can’t reach the pedals, and I’m trying my best to keep myself from crashing. You can imagine how frustrating this can be.
I didn’t have the “teeth falling out” dream until my mother related how half of one her molars had broken off while eating. It was the way she described suddenly feeling something hard in her mouth and wondering if there was something in her food. Only to find when she spit it out that it was her own tooth! I always assumed it would be a painful experience but to just have them fall away unnoticed unnerved me.
I boxed that for those with over active imaginations.
I’ve been having nightmares about grade school for probably 15 years, and nightmares about high school for nine.
In the past few years they’ve gotten to the point where they are not always nightmares (I’ve even had a few that were somewhat pleasant), but if it features someone I knew in grade school or high school, or it features either setting, it’s almost surely going to be a nightmare.
My super-realistic dream is witnessing an airliner crash. I must have had this dream a thousand times, and every time I have it my reaction is invariably “Holy shit, I’ve dreamed of seeing an airliner crash a thousand times and it’s finally happened.” (Zero correlation with actual events, of course).\
My school dreams are different from everyone else’s. I’m returning after a long absence and my inbox is overflowing with 10 years of mail and assignments, but I’ve been given the opportunity to start where I left off. I feel somewhat out of place being 10 years older but I’m glad to be there.
I haven’t had that dream for a while, but that was my most recurring dream too. When I was living at home (with parents) it was always that I was walking up stairs, got to the top, and the lights would go out and I couldn’t turn them back on. Then I’d panic.
When I was really little, I had frequent dreams about either flood water or flowing lava coming through our house. (Upstate NY isn’t exactly a hotbed of volcanoes, but for some reason I was afraid there would be a volcano.)
Oh, yeah, another one: for about two years after my high school English teacher died (3 years after I finished high school), I had dreams that either a) he was still alive and I was talking to him and wondering why I’d been told that he had died or b) I was at the funeral again talking to my friends and being really upset about it. The strange part is that I didn’t really like him all that much when I was in high school so I don’t know why I would dream that much about him.
I rarely have nightmares as such but a recurring theme for me is vertigo - for some reason I have to make a terrifiying climb up a ladder, wall or precipice, and I get stuck, or freeze with fear.
I’m not particularly afraid of heights IRL, so I don’t know why this is such a regular motif in my unconscious, or is it subconscious.
I often have frustration dreams, where I have a crucial deadline to meet and everything goes absurdly wrong. Could be catching a train, plane or bus, or making a phone call, similar to the ones mentioned in previous posts.
I’m sure I’ve ‘witnessed’ a plane crash more than once in a dream as well.
I really enjoy what I call ‘thriller’ dreams. They usually involve escaping from a situation and having to hide, often in a familiar setting like a building or a house.
I used to have the ‘finding you have no clothes on in a public place’ dream but it’s been a while now.
getting lost. I have about 5 minutes to get to class, the store, etc., but can’t find my way there.
having a big paper due or a test the next day and not having started it…oh wait, that’s real life. Never mind.
treeplanting, while treeplanting. We all had these. Working all day only to work all night.
the next day. If it’s Tuesday night, I’ll dream that it’s Wednesday and I’m going to my classes and meals and appointments. Then I’ll wake up Wednesday morning and think it’s Thursday. This must happen every week.
The River Dream - I haven’t had one in years, but they were all-too frequent for awhile. I’d be walking along a river or stream, usually in the woods, sometimes in a park, or once in awhile it would be an empty cold-water beach instead. The key thing to all the dreams was the water, and the fact that I really, really wanted to go into it. Sometimes I did get into the water; other times, I was interrupted by other people around.
The Architectural Dream - Like other people have mentioned, I have dreams about walking around an old house; in my case, it’s the house I grew up in in Ohio, except in my dreams, it’s always much larger than it was in real life. There are always hidden rooms, stairways, hallways… and so elaborately detailed in my mind that I could draw floor plans of the dream house when I wake up.
The Perfect Outfit Dream - I’m either packing or putting on some clothes to go somewhere–an ensemble sort of outfit with all sorts of pieces that I absolutely have to have with me before I can go to wherever it is I’m going. Of course, I can’t find the socks or gloves or scarf, or whatever, and tear up the room looking for them, because I have to go right away, but can’t leave without the missing things!
The Godzilla Dream - I’m being chased by a monster, often Godzilla looming in the distance, although sometimes it’s a smaller and closer threat. I run in a way I never could in real life, covering miles over hills and woods and open fields without getting winded.
I’ve said before that I think many of our symbols are personal. I know what the house dream means to me. I doubt it means quite the same thing to anybody else.
I can only remember having the classic ‘in public with no pants’ dream twice. Both times, rather than being afraid or embarassed and met with scorn and laughter, I strutted proudly as various people in the crowd stood awestruck or gave me compliments.
I also have dreams involving rivers and/or trains. Usually what happens is that I have a bunch of my stuff (stuffed animals, clothes, books, etc) spread out over a length of train tracks, or near a river bank, and then a train is coming, and I have to move everything, but there isn’t enough time. Or else the river is going to flood the area.
Then I’ll have another dream about trains where I’m in a city that is nothing BUT train tracks, and very busy ones at that. It’s nearly impossible to find a safe place to walk or stand.
My family has a second house that no one lives in or will do anything to maintain. It’s a total waste, but it’s just the way things are and there’s nothing to be done about it.
One more frickin’ year at college in a stinkin’ dorm room the size of a walk-in closet. The bathrooms are always in bus-station condition and the fire alarm is always right outside my door. I see old friends but they give me no joy whatsoever. I’m 38 years old and still havent frickin finished college, for chrissake. I have a vague, dreadful feeling that I’ve been sent back because I still have some growing up to do.
Back in college, but have somehow forgotten half the classes I’m taking, so I’m constantly showing up for the first time in weeks, deeply unprepared. Regardless of subject, my prof is invariably an uptight music theory instructor I once had.
The woman I’m about to get jiggy with turns out to be, uh, “anatomically incorrect.” As in Barbie.
About three times a year I dream that I am in Manhattan and I’m trying to find Tiffany’s. This has gone on for years! I’ve even had a couple of friends bring me photos of the store front. I’ve never been to NYC.
Another house dream. In this one the kitchen is in the center of the house and it is always open and elevated. There are open shelves around the kitchen and they all contain fabulous antique wooden boxes. I’m supposed to inherit the house from a woman I knew in Denmark 32 years ago – but I’m never quite certain of it. There’s also a porch leading to very large room that looks like a gentleman’s club. It even has club chairs all around the room and a piano.
My school dream is a little different. (I was an English teacher.) It’s the first day of school and I’m unprepared. The school is new and I don’t know my way around or where my classroom is. I can’t find the office. When I do find the office, they don’t know anything and can’t answer questions. I can’t find the bathroom. When I try to grade essays, they don’t make any sense at all. (But I laugh a lot with my students!)
(When I first quit teaching, my teaching dreams were all nightmares.)
I used to have a recurring dream that I was a passenger in a car driving over a bridge similar to the one between Detroit and Windsor, only it arched way, way, way up high, higher than any bridge had ever done before. And it was a winding bridge, too, so it was high and twisty. And the very centre section, at the highest point in the bridge, was missing, but the bridge was so steep that we couldn’t see the missing portion until we were just about to drive over it. The car would fall through the hole and just before it impacted the water, I’d wake up.
I first remember having this dream when I was 3 (long before I’d ever been on the Detroit/Windsor bridge), and it spurred a lifelong fear of bridges and heights for me.
I don’t have this dream anymore. I think I cured it by scaling the Sydney Harbour Bridge. For that I’d have to give credit to TheLoadedDog & his thread on G’Dope about it a couple years ago - he gave me the idea.
I frequently have dreams about arguments with my mother over really inconsequential things. We always end up screaming at each other and then storming off in a huff in opposite directions.
When I spend a lot of time playing one computer game (it doesn’t matter which - Tetris or NWN or Rise of Nations or whatever), I dream about it, just the monitor and I know that I’m playing because the images are changing in the way I expect to be directing them. There’s always a subtle difference that makes the game harder than it’s supposed to be, though - like one of the tetris pieces will have 5 components instead of 4 and it is really hard to fit into any spots. Very frustrating dreams, I wake up so pissed off at these games!
In my dream I’m on a message board where everyone is retelling their dreams, and I secretly hope that I’m the exception to the rule that there’s nothing on earth more boring than listening to someone else retell a dream.
“There were rabbits! Rabbits carrying onions into a giant vagina guarded by Nazis! What does that mean?”
