I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 23. Until then, I quite often had dreams that I was in a situation where I needed to drive somewhere, and I was terrified that I would either driver poorly, or that I would get caught driving without a license.
No more dreams like that since I got the license. Hardly surprising.
I don’t know if it would really qualify as recurring, but several times I have dreamt that I killed someone. Horrible, horrible dreams.
Zeldar, in that part of the dream in which you know you are dreaming, have you ever tried to control what is going on?
Zoe, it varies. As I said, some of them are pleasant enough that I dread waking up. And there have been some dreams that as soon as I go back to sleep (hours later) I pick up where I left off. I mean down to the smallest detail. Those are rare, but fun.
I have the same two every night. First, I’m working at Barnes & Noble again (I did that for a few years), only now my store looks like some really fancy palace. (strangely I had that one back when I worked at B&n too, which means I’ve been having it for many years now).
The second one is horribly teasing! I dream that I am in NY again, visiting. In the neighborhood I spent my whole life till now in. I am eating pizza at Valentino’s, the pizza store I frequented almost daily! Here’s what’s sad about the dream. In it, I am aware that I have dreamt this same thing many times before, only I am convinced that THIS TIME IT’S REAL. I eat my pizza and say something like “thank god this time it’s NOT that dream!”
Then I wake up and realize that it was, and that there’s no way I’m getting NY pizza any time soon.
Oh, I forgot to mention, another recurring theme I have in dreams are earthquakes. I am petrified of earthquakes here. We have them all the time and I hate them because they make me feel helpless. The interesting thing is, many times that i have a dream about an earthquake, I later find out we really had one.
Mine is plane crashes. I’m not afraid of flying. Four or five times a year I’ll dream of a plane taking off and about 30 seconds later it bursts into flames, either in midair or right after it crashes into the ground. I can’t link the frequency of the dreams with anything going on in my life, and I am freaked out for days after one of these. Sometimes I am just watching, and sometimes I am in the plane, interacting with all these people moments before horrible, fiery death. And even if I die in the dreams, I can still see what’s going on.
Actually, I dream of death often. I’ve been eaten by sharks, fallen off cliffs, drowned, etc. Those freak me out too, but they aren’t recurrent like the planes.
Some previous offerings on recurring dreams:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=14847
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=33542
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=45144
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55959
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=97045
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=102750
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=136502
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=162179
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=168761
BTW, I work with a gal from the Tamil Nadu state of India. She mentioned also having had the recurring dream of being in class at final exam time, and realizing that she wasn’t prepared, and hadn’t been to class all term.
Wow. I’ve had the teeth-crumbling dream too (ugh). I had no idea that it was so common.
I’m pretty sure my other recurring dream is unique: I’m being forced to play the female lead in a Shakespeare play with no advance notice – I’m somehow supposed to read the lines once and memorize them. (Funnily enough, it’s not always the same play; it’s been Othello a couple of times, and The Merchant of Venice once.)
Some people dream about being back in school, I dream about working retail again.
I’m always running late and always never know what to do - things must have changed in the five years since I quit, right?
I also have a recurrent nightmare. I come home and am walking through the hallway to my bedroom when I’m grabbed by the throat and have my feet kicked out from under me. I’m thrown to the floor and a foot lands on my stomach. All he says is “Welcome home bitch” … and that’s where I wake up. Always the same person’s voice but I never see the face.
The recurring dream I have (when I sleep) is of my grandmother. She raised me from a baby till I was 12 (when she died). She was my best friend. I started having this dream where she and I would walk down a hallway together and the hallway never seem to end.
Just before I wake up, I would thank her for spending time with me to which she would say, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
That’s when I would wake up and I’m never sure what it means but I always have this dream at least twice or three times a week since I was 14.
I dreamt that I was at the summer camp I used to work at with 30-40 people from different stages in my life. It started out very fun, like a big reunion. Then these helicopters fly overhead, and I make a run for the tennis courts. By the time I get there the helicopter is hovering very low, and a guy inside is point a gun at my husband. Then I wake up. I was so disturbed that I didn’t even tell hubby about it. I had the dream two more times within a month. About halfway throught the third time, I realized I was dreaming and changed the outcome. I got to the tennis court and got hubby out before he was killed.
I often dreamed that I’m being chased, and I’m trying to run, but I feel like I’m going in slow motion. However, the last time I had that dream, I managed to turn it into a cross between running and flight (like the footage of astronauts hopping around the moon), and finally got away.
I’ve also had the classic theatre dream (always right before performances) that I arrive at the theater on opening night only to find that we’re doing a completely different play, and I don’t know my part at all.
Had the teeth falling out dream. I would usually be in front of my parent’s bathroom mirror at the beginning, but I wouldn’t actually see the teeth falling out. I would start pushing them out with my tongue at the slightest tongue movement and sometimes would see or hear them fall into the sink. I had it for a couple of years. Surprisingly, I wasn’t too terrified during the dream, but instead would feel a bit nonchalant - like, “Well, this probably shouldn’t be happening.”
During the same time, I had the faulty brakes dream. Usually, it would occur at the same intersection (one I drive through almost every day IRL - about a mile away from home). I would step on the brakes, then realize I wasn’t slowing down fast enough and would then press harder. Don’t recall ever crashing though. I would wake up before that.
For about six months until very recently, I had a recurring theme in my dreams. Any dream that involved walking, I would feel as if my legs each weighed 100 pounds, making the activity incredibly physically exhausting. The location did not make any difference (the desert, beach, courtyard of my old jr. high (?), etc.) During many of those dreams, I would wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat.
I still have dreams where I realize I’ve been forgetting to attend one of my college courses or tutoring sessions and then panic when I realize how much I have missed (or sometimes, I can’t remember my class schedule). IRL, I graduated from college 8 years ago, yet I’ll still wake up feeling a bit panicky before realizing I was only dreaming.
Bizarre.
I’m really surprised at the number of dreams with “severe dental problems.” I always assumed I was the only one.
I only had the teeth crumbling dream once, so it isn’t really a recurring dream for me. Then again, it seems to be a universally recurring dream 
I sometimes dream that I’m being chased through a house by a shadowy figure. I always end up cornered somewhere with a weapon, usually a gun, but I can’t seem to kill him. He’s not superhuman or anything, I just miss every time I fire, no matter how close he gets.
Oh yeah, speaking of guns: Thanks to that Dirty Harry movie I always have exactly 6 shots in my Colt Revolvers instead of unlimited ammo when I am dreaming 
My recurring dreams are very boring compared to some of yours. Every so often I’ll dream of having to deal with minor, but annoying, car repairs or minor but expensive car accidents. Things like some switch or another going out that takes my car out of commision for a week and costs me several hundred dollars or a slow speed accident on icey roads that causes some expensive body damage. No one ever gets hurt in these dreams or is ever in any real danger, but I’m stuck dealing with a lot of bullshit paperwork as a result. I always wake up just after I’ve realized all the annoying paperwork and other bullshit I’m going to have to deal with as a result.
The onset of winter (until recently I lived in Anchorage) always set these dreams off, I always found winter driving to be very stressful and not at all fun, any other times I’ve felt a lot of anxiety has also brought on one of these dreams. They started, I think, after my second winter driving when a cracked cable guard was letting water into the plastic sheath that protected the cable going from the gas pedal to the throttel, with the result being that I had the throttel jam open a few times while driving at 40+mph on the way to class/work. I managed to avoid any accidents during the week that was going on but ever since then all of my anxiety induced dreaming has typically involved an out of control or otherwise misbehaving vehical that will require a long series of stressful and annoying repairs/paper work to sort out.