First day of school

Thursday’s dream was one of the most unusual I’ve had in a long time.

In this dream…

I was a high school student attending the first day of classes at a new school. It wasn’t the high school I attended as a boy, nor was it any particular high school that I can remember.

Somehow I had misplaced the information pages the school had sent me with my assigned home room, class schedule, floor maps, etc. So I walked into the school building just about as clueless as a new student could be.

Stepping up to the counter in the main office, I explained my situation and asked if they could provide me with duplicate information pages. The woman behind the counter gave an exasperated sigh and said,”Yes, but it’ll take some time to put it together.” She gave me directions to my home room, where I was supposed to be, and told me she’d send the material to me there.

When I finally found the room, all the other students were seated at their desks and the teacher was standing in front of them with his arms crossed. “Well, well, well!” He glowered at me when I walked through the doorway. “Who the Hell are you and what the Hell are you doing here?!”

I knew it was going to be a rough day. I turned my head to look at the clock on the classroom wall, but…

instead of that clock, I found myself looking at the clock by my bed. I was waking up.

A Thomas Dolby Soundtrack

My Wednesday dream was most entertaining, but since it involved many of my current neighbors I really can’t write much about it. Y’all do remember my policy in that regard, right?

What I can say is that it had three main scenes:

The first found me attending a party out on the back patio. I don’t know what was being celebrated, but the sun was shining, the patio was much larger than in real life, and there was live music being played by bands floating on barges down on the river below us. There were lots of my neighbors in attendance at the party, and we were all having a great time.

The second part was actually more of a segue between the first and third parts. It found me excusing myself from the party on the patio to take out my trash. I had an item to throw out that was too large for the trash chute so I started carrying it down to the dumpster behind the building.

Before I left the hotel I saw our building’s owner standing in a hallway with his face pressed firmly against a door I’ve never noticed. I said “Hi” to him, and he looked back and said “Hi” to me in reply.

Then the door before him just dissolved and he started running down a strange set of stairs.

The dream’s third part found me following him down, down, down into a sub-basement I didn’t even know existed. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs he was running and I was racing after him.

We entered a huge open room that was painted a pale yellow with one, broad red strip running along the base of all four walls.

“What the Hell is this?” I shouted.

The owner turned back to me and said, “Oh, I’m going to make this into a gymnasium. What do think about that?” And off he ran again.

As I continued to chase him, a soundtrack that had been playing quietly in the background of the dream began building in crescendo. It was Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science.”

I woke then, and that song was in my head like an ear-worm for the longest time.

Strange coffee

Last night’s dream was long, vividly clear, and smoothly (though strangely) segued through three main parts.

In my dream…

1st part:
I was brewing myself some coffee in the kitchen of a house in which I’ve never lived. I almost bought the house once, though. It was showed me by a realtor decades ago and, for a short while, I considered making an offer on it.

When I poured out the coffee from the glass carafe, it was a pale yellow color, almost as if I’d only put a tiny bit of ground coffee into the machine. This was a surprise, since the coffee I make is always very strong, stronger than most people like.

Since I was in a hurry and was planning to take the coffee with me in a traveling cup, I looked in the kitchen cabinet for some instant to mix in with the extremely weak though hot stuff I’d just poured. What I found on the shelf was the instant coffee I expected in its store-bought jar. And there was something unexpected, too. There was a large test tube filled with what appeared to be instant coffee crystals.

Looking closely at the crystals in the test tube, I could see no difference between them and what was in the jar. And they smelled the same. So I decided to pour the “mystery” coffee into my cup and see what happened. To my surprise the coffee, if that’s what it was, started bubbling and foaming like something you’d see in a cartoon, the foam spilling out over the top of the cup. Woh!

Since I was short on time, I decided to take the strange brew with me.

2nd part:
The next part of the dream found me walking along the sidewalk of Fourth Street, near the IU main campus in Bloomington, IN. It was late afternoon, and apparently some festivities were underway.

All the little restaurants had placed extra chairs and tables out front of their establishments, bistro style. This made for some very close quarters, and I had difficulty navigating my way along, trying to avoid bumping into folks as they sat eating.

And the coffee cup I carried was still bubbling and foaming. Everybody seemed just as surprised at that as I was.

3rd part:
Someone called to me from the big front porch of a chapter house belonging to one of the campus fraternities.

Walking up the steps I shook hands with the guys at the railing then made my way over to the friend who’d hollered at me. We chatted for a bit, then he started telling me about a common house called the “Cowboy Palace.” He was convinced I should move there. I wasn’t so convinced (he was always giving me unsolicited advice) but I listened anyway.

Then, during a lull in our conversation, I took a deep breath, leaned back and…

…woke up.

Driving and banqueting

Saturday’s sleep provided me two dreams: both of them were very detailed, but neither was complicated nor disturbing.

driving:
Once again I was haunted by my UPS past. In this dream I was driving my truck and making deliveries along a 3-block section of the route I delivered in Bloomington, IN, decades ago.

Nothing exciting was happening, but I was moving smoothly and efficiently through every step of the package delivery process: safely parking the vehicle, quickly selecting the packages, walking them into the proper stores, getting the necessary signatures, walking briskly back to the truck, then driving to the next delivery stop. While my every motion was almost automatic, the main area of concern in this dream was the driving: I was looking ahead at developing traffic situations and responding to them sometimes before they happened.

It was almost like real life. On a good day.

banqueting:
The strongest elements of this dream were visual and auditory: cognitive, not so much.

The banquet seemed to be part of a larger conference or event I was attending, but I have no idea about what the subject or nature of the conference was. There was activity going on out in the hallway and other rooms of what must have been a conference center or large hotel, but this dream found me in exclusively in the banquet room itself.

I was dressed semi-formally, as was almost everyone else, and I was waiting to choose my seat at one of the long, nicely appointed tables that filled most of the room. I didn’t appear to have a dinner mate, I was attending the affair solo. But I saw and heard several people now filing into the room whom I knew, (some of whom I now know or have known in real life), so it was clear I’d be sitting near friends.

Speakers and dignitaries were assembling at a table near a podium and microphone, so speeches of some sort were going to be part of the affair. But… I woke up before things could develop any further.

Nightmares: 2 out of 3 bad dreams

From time to time I’ve mentioned that the only dreams I’ll share here are those that don’t involve real, private people whom I have known and who are still on this side of the dirt. Neither will I mention those dreams that involve immoral or illegal activity. There’s no need for me to write anything that might embarrass a private person, nor anything that might overly interest the gendarmerie.

To that short list above of dream types I won’t talk about here I now must add those dreams that overly disturb me: nightmares, if you will. This week I’ve had some of those.

These three “bad” dreams were all long and extremely detailed, but I’ve had time to think about them and believe no harm can come from briefly mentioning their general themes.

flying:
Dreams of flying are supposed to be among the most common, if we’re to believe the literature. But the one I had earlier this week was my first. Oh, I’ve had plenty of dreams about falling; they were common during my childhood, but falling and flying are not the same things at all.

The flying part of this dream was okay. At first it was somewhat thrilling, but the newness of the experience wore off rather quickly. It was other elements of this dream that made it unpleasant and disturbing. While not as nightmarish as the next two I’m going to mention, it was still a bad dream.

bad concert experience:
In this too long and vividly detailed dream I had a number of extremely bad experiences while sitting in the audience at a classical music concert. From sitting around rude and noisy people, to losing my ticket, to having my seat stolen, to darned near being trampled by rowdy, stampeding folks… Oh man, this just kept getting worse and worse until I finally woke up.

missing a bus:
Again, this was a long, very detailed dream that I’ll only mention briefly. It had me making a relatively short intracity bus trip, but one that involved making a few bus changes (from route to route, etc.) on the way to my destination. And it was extremely important that I arrive at the destination on time.

While waiting for the last bus, I stepped inside a nearby convenience store to get a snack and… I missed the bus. I was SO disappointed, and I knew that others would be, too. It was just so sad! Heartbreakingly sad! The depth of the sorrow was such that it was what woke me. Woh!