Three #Dreams: Two Nice and One Not

It’s interesting to note that at the present time and for the past week or so the dividing line between sleep and wakefulness has become increasingly blurry. This is so at both ends of a sleep segment, its beginning and its end, and sometimes at different points during the night and during the day. Now, I’m not complaining about this at all. Given my station in life and the complete Independence of my schedule on anything other than my own timetable, I’m free to enjoy this as a feature rather than gripe about it as a problem.

Hand in hand with this phenomenon is an unusually active dream-life. Last night brought me three that were extremely vivid and detailed. The first two were very fun, but the third was absolutely not.

Dream #1:
In this dream I chanced to overhear a cellphone conversation on my phone between two young women (neither of whom bore any resemblance to anyone I know or have ever known in the real, waking world) in which they were planning a private escapade. After listening to all the details of what, when, and where they were planning I decided to show up and enjoy myself with them. And I did. And a great time was had by all!

Dream #2:
A very similar activity to that shared by me and the two young women in the first dream was shared by me with a somewhat older woman in the second dream. Where the women in the first dream were, oh… maybe twenty-somethings, the woman in this one was perhaps forty or so. Again she was someone new that I’d just met, not anyone that I’ve ever known before or know now. And again, we had a great time.

Dream #3:
This was a return of a common nightmare, one which found me as a UPS delivery driver on the route in downtown Bloomington, IN, that I used to work for so many years. I’d been dispatched with a load that was impossibly huge: more packages and stops than I could possibly handle, more packages and stops than anyone could possibly handle. And I was running out of time. The day was ending and I had so damned much work left to do. I was racing the clock but I knew, I just knew there was no way I was going to get done. It was horrible! Simply horrible!

Whew! That Post Office pkg. is finally here!

The ball was actually dropped at least a few times along the way, and it looks like each service failure happened right here in San Antonio, but I’m very relieved to finally have in my hands that package the USPS should have delivered to me on Tuesday of this week.

Concerns over late deliveries of non-critical items shouldn’t bug me as much as they do. I suppose that’s a mental habit of my UPS days still with me. But one thing’s for sure, now that I’ve got the package it seems a weight has been lifted from my mind. Now if I just knew about that order from Franklin/Covey… At least F/C ships to me via UPS, and the guys in brown are one hell of a lot more dependable when delivering to me than the Post Office is.

A bad #dream with a common theme

Though I’m a decade and a half away from my career as a UPS delivery driver, dreams related to that job still haunt me. And I’m resigned to the fact that they probably always will. Most of the UPS-themed dreams are unpleasant to one degree or another, but they no longer force me awake in a state of terror as they used to.

Something that used to irk me at that job was the occurrence of delivery “irregularities.” Some of these were more common and less troublesome than others, but none were things I enjoyed. They always complicated the normal, productive work flow of my day at least a little, and some times a lot. Examples of this are: a residential consignee not being home, which meant I might have to find a safe place to leave the delivery or maybe come back the next day; a C.O.D. tag with no money amount indicated, which meant I was supposed to collect money when the package was delivered but I wasn’t told how much; an incorrect delivery address, the label showing a building or house number that didn’t exist on the street indicated; etc.

This dream of a few nights ago involved a time-consuming irregularity on a day when I didn’t have any extra time to spare.

In my dream …

… I was delivering packages during Peak Season, that time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas when UPS is busiest. It so happened that I had another driver assigned to me as a helper, which meant there were two of us working out of my truck. After I’d completed a delivery to a fabric store (well, I thought I’d completed the delivery) and was about to walk out, one of the ladies who had just accepted the packages called out, “Wait, Roscoe! Something’s not right here!” She’d opened a box she’d just signed for and was staring at what was inside.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself as I headed back to her. “I don’t have time for this today.”

“We’d never order anything like this!” she said emphatically.

I checked the label on the box, and sure enough, it was addressed to her store.

By this time my helper had completed his delivery and had walked over to see what the problem was. “Have you checked the packing slip?” he asked.

The lady pulled the packing slip out of the box and noticed that it indicated the merchandise should have gone to a another merchant, a cross-town rival of hers.

Picking up the box I saw that there was a second label on it; and the second label was addressed to the rival’s store. Damn! “I signed for this,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean I get to keep it?”

I really didn’t have the time on my schedule to waste with this nonsense! “This is really valuable stuff, Roscoe,” my helper said, looking at the packing slip. “We’d better call the Center and tell a supervisor about it.”

Yeah, he was right. But, damn, I really didn’t have the time to waste on this nonsense! We were going to have to race through the rest of the day if there was any chance for us to get done!

Aggravated, I…

…woke up.

In the past a dream like this would have found me waking in a sweat, my heart racing and nerves on edge, near panic. Not anymore, thank God. I still wake uncomfortable, but not as if from a nightmare. Not anymore.

A Dog at Work

Interestingly, the end of September and the beginning of October find me sleeping well and dreaming regularly. If that trend continues, there should be a good number of dream-related posts appearing here this month.

This first dream entry for October documents a strange one. It contains people from my past, an environment from my past, and a strange activity on my part.

In my dream…

…I was a UPS employee at the old Mexico Center (located in Denver, IN – long since closed, the territory it served now covered by larger, nearby operating centers). The two other people who appeared in this dream were a boy who was a high school classmate and football teammate of mine, and a woman with whom I worked in Bloomington, IN. They were fellow employees of mine in this dream, and we were all nearly the same age, mid-twenty somethings.

The three of us were conspiring to keep and care for a dog at the workplace, and to do so at company expense. The rationale we were using was that the dog was a”watchdog” providing an extra measure of security. We were taking the position that UPS should pay for the dog’s food and care, and that we should be allowed to shop for the dog’s food, take him to the vet, etc. while were on the clock, being paid for that time by UPS.

Within the dream, we were being successful in this little project, though justifying the time and cost to higher-ups was an an ongoing challenge.

Caving, and a darned cellphone

Last night’s dream (well, Wednesday morning’s, actually) combined a few rather common elements, but did so in an unusual way.

There were clearly two distinct parts to this dream, the second part following events of first, and related to them, though involving a different set of concerns.

In my dream…

… I was 1.) living in Bloomington, Indiana, 2.) working as a UPS driver, and 3.) enjoying a favorite sport: exploring the wild caves in that part of the state. All three of these are things I actually did when younger and are things that often appear in my dreams.

There was one wild cave of which I was particularly fond, which had an entrance located only a few miles out in the county from where I was living. Of its many interesting features was a horrendously long, tight crawlway through which one had to pass in order to reach the larger rooms and more complicated passageways deeper in the cave. I came to love that cave and its long crawl, and often visited it alone. (I don’t endorse solo-caving, by the way. It’s an extremely dangerous activity.)

At any rate, in my dream I’d adopted the habit of driving to the cave and doing its long crawl as an early morning exercise: showering afterwards and then reporting for work. And in this dream a couple of my fellow UPS drivers wanted to do the “early morning crawl” with me. I had extra gear (helmets and carbide lamps) and decided to let them tag along.

This was the first part of my dream, and it didn’t go too well. The guys were able to follow me through the crawl all the way to where it opened up into the first big room. Of course, I moved at a slower pace than was my norm. After resting for a few minutes I told them we’d have to move faster on the way out if we wanted to make it to work on time. Now, being late is an unforgivable sin for a UPS man, so these guys said, “Okay, lead the way.”

And I moved quite a bit faster, falling quickly into my familiar rhythm. When I arrived at the front end of the crawl I was alone. I’d expected the other two to be well behind me, so I waited for them to come out. They never did.

Not wanting to be late, I ascended the rope and climbed out of the small pit that formed this particular entrance to the cave system. And still there was no sign of my two buddies. So I waited some more.

The second part of this dream found me still waiting above ground near our parked cars when start time at UPS got near and I had to call the Center to let them know I was going to be late. Only… I’d forgotten how to work my damned cellphone. I was holding it in my hand, but I did not know how to make the phone call.

And I stared at the phone in confusion for the longest time, not having the slightest clue what to do. Then it started ringing. And I knew it was a UPS driver supervisor trying to reach me, but I didn’t know how to answer the damned phone.

And still there was no sign of the two guys I’d taken into the cave. And there I was with a ringing cellphone I didn’t know how to work, late for work, not knowing whether or not my two friends had had an accident back in that crawlway, and…

… I woke up.

Whew! I was SO glad to see by my bedside clock that I’d had a good, long sleep. It was safe for me to start waking up. I did NOT want to return to that dream!