July 8, 2010

Dreams

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
- William Dement


I have this recurring dream where I’m hardly wearing any clothing and for some reason I’m walking around in around in public. I try to come to grips with the fact that I’m only wearing a pair of Sponge Bob Square Pants boxers. Which, strangely enough, wouldn’t really bother me in real life.

Dreams to me are usually just a tiny window into our thought process for a brief moment in time. The dreams can vary from common realistic situations, to far-fetched fantasy scenarios.

Just like bad breath and choking snores, everyone has dreams that they feel are important to blather to the rest of us.

A word of caution: Don’t be that person that always feels the need to share their demented dreams with other people.

If you’re having sex with Big Bird on the set of Gone With the Wind and your third grade teacher is filming the whole thing on a Speak-And-Spell, please do all of us a favor and report to your nearest psychiatrist. It’s best to seek the proper medication because you’ve passed nutty quite some time ago.

One of the more comical situations I’ve dealt with is when someone you know wakes up from a crappy dream they’ve just had in which I’ve had a starring role. They’re instantly pissed off, even though I’m completely innocent. I’ve even had my wife Shannon wake me up after having one of these dreams and give me the stink eye as if I had a fugue-state affair with someone she works with.

And speaking of bad dream experiences, we’ve all had to deal nightmares at some point in our lives. I remember one of the first real night terrors I had was when I first watched “Nightmare of Elm Street”.

Now that I think back, I have no clue as to why Tom and Annette were letting their ten-year-old son watch a horror movie about a cackling roasted-faced child killer with knife blades for fingers.

I recall waking up and not being able to differentiate between what was real and what was dream. So, I just lay petrified in my bed, occasionally peering out from underneath the safety of my sheets.

And we all know that no monster, killer, or nocturnal evil can get past a pair cotton San Diego Padre sheets. Apparently it holds some form of magical protection for kids, something akin to kryptonite for all things that go bump in the night.

Another part of nightmares that can be equally frustrating is when you’re in a situation that requires either running from or defending yourself in a fight.

What type of intense gravitational pull is exerted on my body as soon as I enter dreamland? I can remember having a dream where I was pitching in a baseball game in college, only to have it seamlessly revert to a game of wiffleball in a walk-in closet.

Please spare me your Freudian evaluation…

I also tend to sleep walk. Well, not really walking. More like jumping out of bed and ranting nonsense and freaking my wife out to the point where she’s relegated to being a nighttime bouncer. Most of my antics revolve around keeping my daughter Samantha safe, so at this point, I’m safe in my freakery.

To me, dreaming is a healthy process that we should all embrace and explore. There’s even ongoing studies regarding something called lucid dreaming, which is where you train yourself to realize you’re in a dream so that you can delve deeper into why you’re actually having that dream.

I guess in the long run, just try and accept what they are. Dreams are just fantastical home movies set within our own mind. Write them down, remember them, study them, just don’t take it too seriously.

I just have to figure out why I have a tendency to sleep walk though. It sure makes my family’s life interesting...and my staircase a insurance liability.