When I was a child, there were two. One was that there were snakes on every horizontal surface, and I was the only one bothered by this (but not panicked, because I’m not that scared of snakes). The other was sitting on a sea-wall at the beach, watching the waves get higher and higher until they’re nearly hitting me, and once again, I’m the only one concerned.
As an adult, it’s one of 4, usually. The no-clean-bathrooms one (culminating with me waking up with a near-bursting bladder), the inadequately-dressed-in-public one, and the it’s-finals-day-and-I-haven’t-been-to-class one, and the one where I’ve left my current job, which I love, to go back to my old job (from 10 years ago), which I enjoyed at times, but which paid nothing, and was nowhere near as rewarding.
Dad has been visiting me in my dreams a lot lately. I’m not sure why now, but about once a week or so he visits. In the dream he knows that he has passed on, and lets me know that he is happy where he is at. One night he told me about all the money he was making “over there.”
My best childhood friend who died during college shows up occasionally. But for one I asked how it was after death and he said “It’s just more of the same”. That was a real downer.
I will get the more unpleasant one out of the way first:
My dad died a year ago and I have had a number of dreams in which he was alive again and we were told to take him home and look after him. I should mention that when he was home, it was an exhausting ordeal due to his advanced ALZ. In the dream, I keep protesting that he is supposed to have been dead, cremated and interred. yeesh.
Onto a better one: I have been teaching college classes for about 17 years and still have recurring nightmares of being late for the class, not being able to find the campus or the room, or I’m assigned to teach something I don’t know anything about, etc.
I know what you mean, and I was thinking about this very dream topic today-- where the dream starts in medias res, and you are already doing or have just done something very bad, like cheating on your spouse, fleeing from an armed robbery or murder you’ve committed, etc. Bad stuff that you would never do IRL, but when the dream starts, too late, you’ve already done it. I dreamed recently that I was in bed with my former boss, having cheated on my fiance. I hate my former boss and would not and have never cheated, but in the dream I had and had to figure out how to deal with it. It was awful. Why does the psyche create these scenarios? Why do I have to figure out how to handle doing something I’d never do?
I also having this recurring nightmare where I’m trying to call my fiance but I cannot manage to dial his number. No matter what I do, using one finger, going slowly, can’t manage it. I’ve wept in frustration in dreams because I just cannot dial the damn phone correctly.
I’m sure a shrink would have a field day with both of these dreams.
I have the “haven’t been to the classes” dreams most often. Either that or the “explaining something over & over again to a customer” dream. The sleep center that diagnosed my very dangerous sleep apnea condition pointed out that remembering a dream indicates a sleep disturbance occured at or around the time of the dream, It is more normal to “know” you dreamed and have it dissolve when you attempt to recall it.
I have one where I’m back in Korea. I was stationed there for a year, and I loved it, because it was my first and so far only time overseas. Nothing special happens in it. I’m usually wandering around Seoul practicing my pidgin Korean or in my favorite bar, which was kind of a hole in the wall without the juicy girls or loud music. Just good beer and good conversation. I usually wake up from those with a smile on my face.
Lord, I have to make it back to Korea one of these years!
What about dreams about real structures that you know? Hampden Park is a stadium in Glasgow that used to hold 150 000 people. I quite often have dreams about slightly surreal versions of it, for example that it has become so vast that it has valleys in the seating, or that another smaller stadium has been built in part of it, or that part of it has disappeared.
I used to have similr dreams about the Forth Road Bridge - there would be some strange addition to the slip roads at the end or I would have to climb along the underside using ropes or something. I’m pretty sure this how Iain Banks came up with the idea for The Bridge, which is set in a vast surreal version of the neighbouring Forth Rail Bridge.
I have vague recurring nightmares about once a month where-in I fall into depression again and start missing my classes. The worst part though is after I wake up, because for a short time I think the dream was real ><
I know I posted this some years back but I’ll repeat.
I have a bunch of regularly occurring weird dreams but the weirdest and most heart-poundingly terrifying is the one where I suddenly remember I either had a baby or was babysitting a baby, and I realize I had forgotten about it and thus haven’t fed the baby in several weeks or months. I put it in a closet or in a room somewhere and then forget about it, and at some point remember and go off to find it. It is in the state of about what you’d expect a 2-months-dead baby to look like. Sometimes I dream that I was giving the baby a bath and left the room and forgot to go back. For weeks. One time I dreamed that somehow I put the baby in a barrel of wine (I think this was right after I re-read The Other by Thomas Tryon) and only remember it’s in there at the next holiday.
Believe me, when I wake up, I think real hard about if I am supposed to be, or was ever in the recent past, minding a baby who has somehow slipped my mind. So far, no actual babies are involved.
From grades 4 through 8, my brother, cousin and I walked to school together, 14 city blocks in Oakland, CA. It was a great and interesting walk: a milk processing plant, ‘dime’ stores, Mom and Pop markets, bars, a hardware store that had frequent contests asking 'how many tacks in the jar?" etc. Best of all though was Children’s Hospital and Research Center, Oakland.
On the walk home we cut across the hospital through the back where there was a very large courtyard, with lots of windows for the children to look through. We would walk by their windows making faces, sometimes mooning them, blowing kisses, doing silly little dances. Some of the kids laughed, some were appalled at the mooning, some clapped. Some were terribly ill and could only muster a slight grin.
In college I began having a dream about the walk home which always included the hospital shortcut. The three of us went by each individual store, went through the hospital grounds, and when we reached our street and turned the corner - our houses weren’t quite there yet. We had to continue walking, turning more and more corners. Each street seemed familiar though and there was never a sense of panic, just a helluva long walk.
It’s decades later and I still have the dream every few months or so. I think I’ve added more to it while thinking about it consciously because it seems to get longer and longer with more detail.
I’m golfing. I’m trying to tee off. I can’t find a spot that allows me to tee off. There’s always something in front of me, or something blocking my backswing, or the line of sight to the hole doesn’t work, but I’m struggling, and struggling to find a tee-off spot while everyone around me is growing more and more frustrated with my incompetence.
I have one that can either end well or poorly: I’m a pilot or passenger on a plane or the space shuttle. Good version: lift-off or take-off, blow througth the upper reaches of the atmosphere, see the brightness fall away to black and stars. Bad version: the craft cracks in half, leaving me strapped in my seat several inches behind open sky, ground coming up fast.
I have a recurring good dream that I can do pull-ups. I totally can’t. I have no idea what this dream is about.
The recurring nightmare I’ve had the most started as early as I can remember. It’s hard to explain- it’s like I’m standing in front of something that is impossibly close and impossibly large. Like my face is mere nanometers from it, my sight of it is limited to the couple of millimeters I can see, but it goes up and side to side forever. It’s so large I lose a feeling of self. It’s so large I can almost convince myself it’s just extremely tiny instead, but plastered on my eyes. Hard to explain! This is always accompanied by fear, frustration, bewilderment, or a combination thereof. I’d love to hear some opinions on that if anyone would like to take a stab at it.
One dream I have occasionally is that I have dropped a spoon down the garbage disposal and reached in to try to retrieve it. My hand gets stuck and I can’t pull it loose. I can’t reach a phone and no one can hear my calls for help. I usually stop dreaming before I discover I’ve starved to death or something fatal like that, but it always weirds me out.
I graduated from college in 1973, but I still occasionally have the missed class - final exam dream.
I was in the army from 1966 -1969. During the 1970’s I had super long hair. I would sometimes dream that I was back in the army, with my long hair, and I was doing my best to avoid having the first sergeant and company commander see me and demand that I cut my hair.
In the 1980’s I cut my hair, and I began dreaming I was back in the army, and that I was really excited because the army was now ‘co-ed’ and there were women in the barracks! But I was much older than everyone else, and none of the women were interested in me.
I sometimes dream that I am out riding my bicycle, far across town, and I suddenly realize that I have two flat tires. And, I can’t figure out if they suddenly went flat, or if I had been riding for hours with flat tires! AND, all the gas stations are either closed, or have broken air pumps, so I can’t get air for my tires.
I’ve had the college exam dream for years. I’ve also had the teeth nightmare, but mine are just very loose; they haven’t fallen out yet.
Another recurring nightmare is that I’m trying to run away from my husband. I discover that he’s been cheating on me, and I race home to pack everything up in my car so that I can run away. I’m not fearful of him harming me, but my revenge is to run away and never let him find me again. I keep forgetting things, like my credit cards, which I plan to take to the bank and max out the cash advance on because I don’t want to leave a paper trail he could follow, so I have to run back inside, knowing that he’s on his way home and will catch me if I stay too long. I finally get into the car and see his car coming and have to pull down side streets and behind parked cars to avoid him. In some dreams I see him coming down the highway towards me and start to a U-turn and I have to exit the highway and take back streets to avoid him.
Funny thing is, the kids are never in my dream. Nor is the dog. I wonder what Freud would say.
Yeah, I end up in my skivvies or nekkid in public, and I realize that other folks might not approve of my sartorial absent-mindedness. Usually, it starts out innocently enough – I’m just going to step out to get the paper off the porch, or get out of bed to go to the bathroom, and end up on the steps of a public building.
The really bad one, though, involves inappropriately public toilets. I mean, there’s a real, working toilet that someone is supposed to use, and I need to use it, but then complete strangers going about their business are watching me … um … sitting there. It’s a vulnerability thing, and I keep thinking, “How the hell did I end up here? More importantly, how the hell am I going to get out of here with any dignity whatsoever?” I hate having to use a toilet anywhere but my home.
I’m up for some armchair dream analysis! Tell me what’s wrong with my brain!
ILovCoffee: I have been considering going to a uh…sleep doctor? – what are they called? – to get checked out for sleep apnea or other disorder. I have extremely vivid dreams almost every night, beginning minutes after I fall asleep. Apparently it isn’t good to fall into REM sleep instantly but I always do, even if I’ve just dozed on the couch for a few minutes. I’ve always been that way, and I never feel fully rested no matter how much sleep I get, and my husband says I snore loudly. My grandfather had serious sleep apnea and eventually got an oxygen mask to wear to bed.
