Bugged By Bad Dreams? Play More Video Games!

Well, at least that's one possible way to interpret this report of a study into whether those who play video games are more likely to have lucid dreaming or even take control of their dreams (I've experienced both on many occasions in my life).

Lost: The Mo(u)rning After

When I go to bed and my head is still processing the day's events, it's usually not a good night for sleeping. Last night was an absolutely lousy night for sleeping.

During the few hours in which I managed to get any sleep at all, I naturally dreamed about Lost. In one of them, I was sitting at a table with two or three other people (I don't remember who) and started weeping at the thought of SPOILER ALERT! what happened to Jack in the finale. Then I woke up to discover that, sure enough, there were tears running down my cheeks and onto my pillow! That's the kind of night I had.

One of the most interesting aspects of the wrap up, for me, was learning the meaning of the so-called Sideways world. Once it became clear what it was, it immediately reminded me of the sleight of hand that the creative team pulled on us at the end of Season 3. There, it was the "flashback" with Jack that turned out to be a flashforward, revealing that at least some of the castaways actually do get off the island. Here it was a twist that relied upon us buying into Daniel Faraday's crazy notion of blowing up an atomic bomb over the island's electromagnetic "hot spot" in the hopes of rebooting reality from 1977 forward. This assumption was further amplified in Season 6 when Desmond seemed to connect with his Sideways counterpart, although now we know that that particular juxtapositioning was either a red herring or a reflection of Mr Hume's unique ability to perceive time differently (my memory's on the former). Probably the revelation of that world's true meaning has left some fans even more disenchanted with its existence, but for me it actually gave those Season 6 vignettes greater poignancy, not less. The Sideways glimpses provided a denouement to those characters' stories in a way that spoiled nothing while still moving them forward, in a fashion.

I'm sure the hating on the finale is already is full voice by now (12 hours after it concluded), but Vicki and I absolutely loved it... from start to finish. It provided both a realistic ending, in which some lived and some died, and a more emotionally satisfying conclusion in which long-lost lovers were reunited and the promise of something "new" for them was dangled, albeit only for our imagination to enjoy. I can't think of any way the creators could have finished the six year run that would've left me more appreciative of all they accomplished. As I told Tammy over Instant Messenger last night, Lost has probably bumped Babylon 5 out of my Favourite Show of All Time spot. I'll be mourning its passage for a long time to come, I suspect.

My First Day (Back) At Work

It was a strange day, to be sure. It started with a very vivid dream in which Vicki and I went to the house that we moved out of nearly 11 years ago and got inside somehow (I'm not saying that we broke in, but I also can't say that we didn't!) only to be confronted with our trespasses when friends and family of the current owners arrived suddenly as we were eating dinner in our old front room. Some sort of indication that I feel like an impostor as I go back to work?

As for the workday itself, it was certainly odd to be driving into the office with Vicki, but even moreso to be located in the same office as her (something we haven't had since sometime in the 90s). On the other hand, it was great to have her around as I adjusted to all of the newness of the place (where are the washrooms? what can I get to drink? where do I get a pen?). She and I headed out to Tim Horton's for a quick lunch so that I could be back by 12:30 to meet (for the second of four times) with my new boss.

I now have a slightly better idea of what I'll be doing over the next 6 weeks, but only slightly. Tomorrow I'll be in my first meeting with people other than my boss and that should be interesting on a number of fronts. I'm looking forward to seeing how some of the interpersonal dynamics work as well as learning more about what they're in the process of developing.

It's still hard to believe that I'll be doing this sort of thing five days a week for the next while!! Five days a week!

Speaking Of Sleeping

I had a dream the other night that really freaked me out. I was back in at the office for a visit, and one of the guys who I know there (I won't say who as I don't want to freak him out!) went to get on the elevator but didn't notice that that the car was misaligned in the shaft. I yelled at him not to get on, but he didn't hear me or else ignored me. He got on and as the damned thing went up I saw his foot get severed from his leg and realized worse was happening up above (but I just couldn't see it)!

When I woke up - right after that happened in the dream, I had willed myself awake as I sometimes do when the events are too intense - and thought about it, I realized that it reminded me of a true life story that had rocked our community when I was a teenager. The younger brother of a girl with whom I was friendly was out jumping on to and off of moving trains, as kids sometimes did, when he lost his grip, fell under the wheels and was... well, I don't even like typing the words. I've had a bit of a fear of moving trains ever since.

I just hope that now I don't develop an irrational aversion to elevators.

I Played Resistance 2 All Night Long!

No, I wasn't up overnight in front of my big screen TV playing the latest and greatest in video games... I was in bed, half-awake and half-asleep, with a seemingly-endless supply of Resistance 2 teammates in front of me who desperately needed health from my Rings of Life gun! That seemed to go on for the entire eight or nine hours that I was in bed, to the degree that I barely felt like I'd slept at all! It was a very frustrating night, and may in fact have been my subconscious telling me that I really shouldn't play quite so many hours of the game before heading to bed. And I should probably heed that advice!

It's been quite the week for bizarre dreams, as on Wednesday night I had two completely different dreams (separated by waking up between them!) about being chased by the Hulk! In each case I was trying to find hiding places where he wouldn't be able to see me, and sometimes I'd look out through a peek hole to spot a tree trunk-like green leg passing by ever so close to my location. Both dreams were intense enough that I finally forced myself to wake up from them at some point. I've never really considered Bruce Banner's alter ego to be all that viscerally frightening before... but now I do!

She Was Much Nicer In My Dreams

Last night, both Tina Fey and Sarah Palin showed up in a dream of mine! They were both over for a visit (yeah, go figure!) and I spent a lot of time talking to each of them individually. Tina was hilarious, as you'd expect, but Sarah actually seemed very warm and intelligent... proving that it was just a dream! I kept feeling sorry for the Alaskan Governor, though, because in the dream it was clear to everyone but her and McCain that they were going to lose, and yet she was so confident that victory was going to theirs. The other thing I distinctly remember thinking in the dream was that, as soon as they all left, I was going to blog about getting the chance to talk to her, and how impressed everyone who reads my blog would be.

Well, at least the first part of that came true!

Living In Jungleland

Technically not a dream, but rather a daydream...

As I was working from home this afternoon, with the Galaxie Goldrock digital music channel playing on the TV, I fell fairly deep into thought about one of the Agile topics that I was pondering (it had to do with performance management, although that's not important to this story). I lost myself down a very long chain of "What if" scenarios that were quite intriguing to me at that particular moment. And then, out of the blue, my attention shifted from that strange fugue state to the music coming from the TV.

It was the long instrumental section of "Jungleland" by Bruce Springsteen, and for about 2 or 3 seconds I somehow got this overpowering impression that a person could actually live within the confines of those few notes, in much the same way that some people can be born into, grow up, grow old and die inside the loosely defined boundaries of a small town, never really knowing what's outside of it, and therefore more or less content with what little they know.

Just like a dream, this brief sensation made perfect sense to me at the time, but quickly dissolved as the mood broke. I could still remember thinking it, and how absolutely true it had felt in the moment, but couldn't really recapture it afterwards. Very weird experience.

And no, I hadn't fallen asleep or anything close to it! I'm the guy who can never sleep, remember?!

Life On Other Planets

The other night I had a really vivid dream about being selected as the person best suited to design and lead an expedition to find life elsewhere. And really, considering that I'm the Agile Manager at work and all, who would be better qualified than me?

Anyway, that bit of non-logic out of the way, it made sense somehow in the dream that I'd be the man for the job. It seems that not only had we recently discovered a means of faster-than-light transportation, but we'd also learned of something that made us believe that there was intelligent life out there in solar system blah-blah-blah. The part of the dream that really stuck out for me, after I woke up, was that I'd decided that there were three "worst case" scenarios for us to prepare for, each of which was worse than the one before it. Here's what they were:

1) We get to blah-blah-blah only to discover that there is no intelligent life to be found there, and our brand new program, that cost so much money to develop, ends up looking stupid. I called this the Laughing Stock result.

2) We get to blah-blah-blah and, regardless of whether we find intelligent life or not, we end up bringing some new kind of virus or germ back with us, which threatens to wipe out the entire Human Race! I called this scenario the Infection result.

3) We get to blah-blah-blah and not only antagonize the indigenous life there, but also give away the location of our homeworld, such that they come to Earth and attempt to conquer us. I called this the Invasion result.

A good deal of my dream dealt with me trying to convince others that these were the three outcomes we needed to worry about, and that our plans should include strategies for each. I don't think we ever got to the point of actually going there, by the time I'd woken up! And the next time I fell asleep (an afternoon nap later that day), I dreamed about it again, and still it was the three results that the dream was obsessed with!

Also, upon waking, I thought it was funny that dealing with conquerors was considered a worse fate than being wiped out by a disease of some sort!

My Subconscious Is So Much Smarter Than I Am!

Last night, I had a wicked stomach ache shortly after going to bed, and was in discomfort for a good portion of the night. It was a really bad time, because not only was I dealing with a sore tummy, but I knew I had the all-afternoon Story Point Workshop to lead at work, and I was going to have to do it on almost no sleep. Arggh.

Eventually, around 3:30, I thought to get up and take a couple Ibuprofen pills, to numb some of the pain. An hour or so later, I must've fallen asleep, because I had a very vivid dream. In it, I went over to visit a couple who Vicki and I used to be very close friends with, but have lost touch with in recent years. Before we moved houses, and I changed jobs, we used to socialize with this other couple once or twice a week, and I would've said the husband was my best friend, after Vicki. But then we drifted apart, and I haven't seen either of them in probably three or four years now.

In the dream, I let myself into their house - I used to even have a key to their home, and they had one to ours! - and was looking forward to surprising them by showing up unexpectedly, and catching up. But when I got to their dining room, they were sitting at the table, candles lit, holding hands. As soon as I saw that, I thought, "Oh no.. I've come over to visit them on their 20th wedding anniversary! How stupid am I!" Embarrassed, I tried to quietly sneak back out of their house, without being seen. But the wife of the couple saw me, and her expression showed how disgusted she was that someone had ruined their wedding anniversary.

After I woke up, I was thinking about that dream, and how weird it was that I'd dream about them, when we haven't seen them in so long. Their names do come up occasionally between Vicki and I, but not in any significant way. Then I thought about it a bit more, and realized, "Hey, today is their wedding anniversary! The 6th day of the 6th month! That's when they got married!" (I was in their wedding party.) Then I thought, "What year would that have been?" It didn't take long to remember that it was the June after I started at the bank, which would make it 1987. Holy crap! Today is their 20th wedding anniversary!

If only my brain worked that well when I'm awake!

For Absent Friends

"Passing by the padlocked swings,
the roundabout still turning,
ahead they see a small girl
on her way home with a pram."
- "For Absent Friends", Genesis (from Nursery Cryme)

I had a dream last night that Tammy came home early from Europe, after only about two weeks of her planned eight. She explained to me that that was all she could take, before the homesickness got to her. Then she got really sad and said she wanted to know if she'd ever be able to go for a longer European vacation, after having to cut this one so short. I told her that of course she could, because it got easier to be away from home the more you did it.

Which is a really strange thing for me to say in a dream, since it's not at all how I feel. If anything, I'm finding it harder, the older I get. It's Tammy that's getting better at it, as far as I can tell. And Vicki has never had any trouble with homesickness to begin with!

So I don't really know what to make of the dream, except that obviously I must be missing Tammy, as she nears the start of her third week abroad.

Who Am I? I'm The Bat-Man!

The night before last, I was having a tough time falling asleep, resulting in lots of tossing and turning. After an hour or so of that, Vicki got up and left to sleep on the couch in the family (aka computer) room. Before long, now that I had the whole bed to myself, I dozed off.

Only to be awoken around 3:00 am when Vicki came into the bedroom, saying, "Bat! Bat! Bat!" There's not all that much that's funny about that, except that it's exactly what Tammy used to say, whenever one would get into the house and start flying around her bedroom upstairs. Not "There's a bat in the house!" or "I'm scared cuz there's a bat!".. just "Bat! Bat! Bat!" It must be genetic or something!

Over the nine years that we've lived in this house, I'd say we've had somewhere around a dozen or so bat events. Usually one of us will hear it flying around in the night, and then I have to go deal with it while Vicki, or Vicki and Tammy, cower under the bed covers. The first few times it happened, I carefully caught the little critter in a towel - always a challenge, especially if it's circling in a bigger room - and then released it outside. However, after one incident in which I did just that, we then we had a repeat performance the very next night, and I became convinced that it was the same damn one! I may've even said to that creature, "I'm pretty sure we've met before!" So then I started resorting to killing them. I don't like killing anything, not even spiders or bugs, but I'm also not crazy about setting them free only to have them come back.

Anyway, we'd thought that we'd finally solved the bat problem early last year (or possibly it was late the year before) when I sealed up a narrow crevice in our kitchen. The kitchen's an add-on to the house, as originally the house had a very small one and so previous owners tacked on an addition that made it about 6 to 8 feet wider. They chose to leave one small section of the original brickwork in place, showing where the house used to end (which I think is kind of cool). As a result, the double sink and the cupboards are all outside of the original house, and there's a space about an inch or two wide that they never filled in, between the brick and the start of the first cupboard. Vicki had suspected for awhile that we had had bats squeezing into the house through that access, after somehow getting past the siding on the outside. Once I finally listened to her theory (a year and a half or so ago), I immediately found cardboard and sealed up that crack, after which we suffered no more nocturnal visitations... until the night before last!

After dealing with the latest intruder, and eventually getting back to sleep, I woke up the next morning and for just a few seconds, I convinced myself it had all been a dream! After all, we solved that particular issue, right? There couldn't really have been a bat in the house last night, now could there? But sadly, it was no dream. So now we're back to trying to figure out how they're getting in.

Weird Hinckley Dream Last Night

I had such a vivid dream last night that I had to check this morning to make sure it was only a dream! In it, Hinckley had stopped me in the stairwell at work to talk to me about a troubling parenting experience he'd had, and was surprised that I didn't already know because he'd blogged about it. I told him I hadn't checked his blog in awhile because it'd been so long since he'd put anything new there. But sure enough, when I went to check, he'd posted a long and detailed entry about what he'd told me, and it was one of the most interesting things I'd read in awhile. And I felt bad because I'd made him tell me all of the same stuff again.

So this morning I had to check to convince myself it really had been a dream.

And it had.

I did see Hinckley in a stairwell yesterday, though... which probably also contributed to the dream seeming real this morning!

New Recurring Dream

I'm not happy about this, but last night I had a dream - the premise of which I've had before - that I have to assume is now going to be a recurring scenario. Which means it'll join my "stuck far from home and unable to get home", "trying to dial a phone number and keep screwing it up", and "about to take a university exam but haven't been attending the lectures or studying" repeaters, among others.

The dream goes something like: Vicki and I (and last night Tammy was there, too) are back at our old house, but after awhile I realize that we shouldn't be there and the dream morphs into us having gone into the house while its current owners are out. There are various reasons for this - last night, I don't even remember what it was - but there's always a panic point when I realize we've trespassed and need to get out of there before we're caught. In the most recent version, it was the next morning, and guests of the other people were waking up and coming out to find us in the living room, just as we were about to pack up and get the Hell out of there. Apparently they'd been so drunk the night before that they didn't remember we hadn't been there partying with them, so then all three of us started making up stories about what had gone on during the drunkfest. And meanwhile I'm trying as hard as I can to collect all of our stuff, not wanting to leave anything behind that could identify us once we're gone and they finally realize we shouldn't have been there.

There was also a little subplot about how the front door lock didn't work, which I think is how I finally realized (outside the dream) that we didn't really live there. I knew that we'd have been robbed blind if that were the case, since (in the real world) we'd been broken into twice in eight years while living there, with a very good lock!

Anyway, it's a very frustrating dream for me to have, because I'm in an elevated state of stress pretty much all of the way through, once I realize we don't live there and therefore shouldn't be there.

A Couple Weird Dreams

Several nights ago, I had a dream in which I came to realize that three seemingly unrelated things actually had something in common. I've had that sort of dream before, but then when I wake up, I realize it's all rubbish once I really think about it: the dream changed some important detail, or imagined a relationship that didn't exist, or whatever. Not at all unusual for that to happen, in fact. But this particular time, when I woke up and was remembering the details, it hit me that it was all true! The coincidences were all there, and yet consciously I hadn't noticed them at all in the weeks leading up to the dream. Clearly my subconscious had picked up on them, though, and decided to smarten me up by way of a dream! I think that sort of thing is incredible, personally.

The other notable dream happened last night, and was all about our former Senior Vice President at work coming back to our company. He was let go two years ago when our office was bought by an American joint venture, and is currently working at another software outfit not too far from here. In my dream, he'd subsequently been let go by that company, as well, and somehow managed to get his old job back. Most of the dream was about how out of step his way of leading was with our Agile environment at work, and how people were starting to suspect his return meant we were about to abandon Agile. I suspect in this case my subconscious was doing some comparing and contrasting for me, but I don't remember enough details to know if it did me any good! Or maybe it was just my insecurity about Agile exhibiting itself in dream form. Only Freud would know!

Signs You're Not Getting Enough Sleep

On Thursday this week, when I'd had several nearly-sleepless nights and a couple of mostly-standing and facilitating days, I experienced something that's probably typical among people who've been severely sleep deprived, although it was a first for me.

I was visiting one of my former teammates, on the first Feature Team I'd been involved with, and he was asking me what he should do with the feedback forms he'd gotten from the Retrospective he'd just lead. He said, jokingly, "Do I just, you know, deposit them?" and he waved his hand over his waste basket. We both laughed and then started talking about how demoralizing it'd be if you asked people to fill out a feedback sheet and then told them to drop them off in a box as they left the room, and the box was visibly situated over a shredder!

And then I said, "That reminds me, Vicki told me last night that she wanted to buy a personal shredder for our house..." But as the words were coming out of my mouth, despite me fully believing what I was saying as I'd started the sentence, I realized that I must've dreamed that conversation, because there was no way Vicki ever said any such thing! I don't know if I've ever before been so confused about the difference between a dream and reality, that many hours after waking up! It was a very strange experience!

More Dreaming About Flooding

Last night I had my second dream in the last couple weeks about being in a situation where the land I was on was being flooded. In this case, Vicki and I had property on a fairly large island but the tide was rising relentlessly. We were driving a car along roads, trying to find a way to higher ground, because we could tell that pretty soon most of the island was going to be underwater. At one point we saw large waves coming in, which reminded me (in the dream) of the tsunami that hit Indonesia and elsewhere a couple years ago around this time.

Clearly all of the Global Warming stuff I've been reading and watching has made its way firmly into my subconscious. Now if only it'd have that same effect on everyone else!

At Least They Got Some Shots

Last night, following the debacle on the weekend in which the Rangers were humbled 9-2 and 6-1 on back-to-back nights, I had a very vivid dream that in their next game they went into the 3rd period without yet having registered a single shot in the game! In the dream, I know they were losing, and being shut out, but the entire focus was on the fact that they might set a dubious record by going an entire game without getting credit for a shot on goal. As it got late into the final period, somehow I was on the ice as a member of this loser team and was trying to skate through a dark maze of some sort, in order to get in position to take a shot at the goalie. It was essentially a variation on the typical "stuck in mud/can't get through a crowd" sort of dream, except I was on skates and still couldn't make much progress. (In real life, I can't skate, so maybe that's not such a stretch.) I don't remember how it all turned out, but I know that later I was dreaming about a situation in which the area I was in was slowly being flooded by rising tides. Too much thinking about Global Warming recently, I guess!

Anyway, back in the real world, the Broadway Blueshirts just now finished losing their 3rd straight game, but at least it wasn't by an embarrassing score tonight. The Islanders, who beat them 7-4 before the Rangers went on an impressive 5-game winning streak (ended by the 9-2 shellacking), were only able to edge them 4-3 tonight. It's still a loss, but there were a few positives beyond the whole "getting a shot on net" thing: they made it close after falling behind 4-1, and Jagr's line accounted for all 3 goals. I guess we'll have to wait until the next game to see if it was a turning point, or just another loss in a series of them.

Weird Coincidence? Or Proof Of Aliens Living Among Us?

Last night I had a dream that I was travelling home from somewhere, by plane. As usually happens in my dreams, it degenerated eventually into a scenario where I wanted to get home but things were going wrong and preventing it from happening. Specifically, in this instance, I was at the airport, trying to get to my plane before it left without me, but it started to taxi. I somehow got onto a bus that was used to transport people from the airport terminal to the plane, and was trying to convince the driver to go ahead and take me to the plane, even though it was already in motion, headed for the runway. He was refusing to, but I still thought I could change his mind. It was quite frustrating, especially because earlier in the dream I'd been sent to the wrong terminal (or something along those lines) by an airport official, making me late getting to the plane.

What's coincidental about this? Well, shortly after I got into work, one of my Feature Team members came in and told me that he'd gotten to his transfer point on the bus ride in this morning, only to see his second bus leaving without waiting for the riders from his bus. He ran for it but couldn't get to it before it left the stop. But then a transit van that happened to be in the area stopped, picked him up, and chased after the bus, getting him to the next stop in time to board it! Other than the change in vehicle types, it's pretty much exactly what I dreamed! I didn't think of my dream when he was telling me his experience, but tonight as I was thinking back on what I'd dreamed, I realized how similar the two stories were.

Is that weird or what?

A Few Recent Dreams

A couple nights ago I had a very vivid dream in which Vicki was piloting a small plane that I was on. We were going to somewhere in the States, I think Phoenix, AZ, and somehow she knew how to get us there in under an hour. I don't remember exactly what the trick was she used (and I'm sure it would be complete scientific gibberish outside of the dream) but I do know that at one point there was a huge wall of water above us, although we hadn't gone underwater or anything like that. I just recall this crystal clear impression of the very high wall of water, like an impossibly tall tidal wave, and that I was worried Vicki was going to accidentally hit it with the plane. When we finally got to wherever we were going (Phoenix?), we landed safely but then she wouldn't let me get off the plane because she had to first call some phone number that would put her in touch with a shady guy who could supply the details on how to get into the country without being arrested. I kept asking her why we didn't just fly to an airport and go through Immigration but she looked at me like I was the dumbest thing since Reality TV. Those were the highlights (I don't recall if we ever got off the plane).

Last night one of my dreams was about our swimming pool. In the dream, we actually had two pools: one in the front yard and one in the back yard (in the real world, we only have the one.. in the back, where you'd expect it). Anyway, the gist of the dream seemed to be that I'd forgotten about the one in the back and hadn't run the pump for it for days, which meant the water was going to be in pretty bad shape when we removed the solar blanket (and we know this from experience, having left the pump off for a 4-day period our first week in the house... only to turn the water bright green!) So in the dream I was scrambling around, trying to turn the pump on, but I couldn't remember where it was! I was checking hoses and lines everywhere, but they always took me back to where I started, with no pump in sight. Eventually I found the shed that housed the pump and all of the other pool equipment, but the light in it wasn't working so I had to fumble around in the dark. It turned into one of those deals where you have to keep moving forward but can't see what you're stepping into, on, or over... and of course the shed was impossible big on the inside, like a tesseract (or, for the Dr Who fans, a TARDIS!) I don't know how that dream ended, but I do know that when I awoke from it, I was very concerned about our pool pump (despite the fact that we closed our pool two months ago) and it took me a minute or two to get clear in my head that our pool was closed, and the pump was in our pool room which is well-lit and not anything like the creepy shed in my dream. That was a pretty cool transitory experience, being awake for a few minutes but still almost stuck back in the dream.

Tammy posted a dream experience on my blog recently, but put it as a Comment to a comic post (she's funny that way), so here it is in case anyone missed it:

"So I guess I must have had Heroes on the brain because I dreamed I had superpowers and was being held with other children (I seemed to be around 10 in the dream) who had special abilities. The people holding us weren't sure what my power was, so they would try and test me by getting me to display them (they seemed to be certain i had telepathy). But then they realized that whenever I went into a room all the lights would burn out. So I obviously had some kind of control over electricity. (Sidenote: actually, I think this dream must have been brought on by the book I'm reading, seeing as I had just read a chapter on Electro). Anyways, then we managed to escape and were chased after by the baddies in a big SUV. But due to my somewhat ambiguous powers to manipulate wiring, I was able to steer the car in the other direction with just the power of my mind."

I'll admit that I'm curious as to what book she might be reading that has "a chapter on Electro" but I'm sure she'll tell us at some point. Sounds like a great dream, anyway.

And Vicki said this morning that she can't remember the last time she dreamed. I said, "You mean, you can't remember the last time you remembered a dream... as otherwise, you'd have long since gone crazy from the lack of dreaming!" Which got me the look. But she's clearly in the camp of people who often don't remember their dreams, or even that they had dreams. Although she does remember sometimes, and has told me about some great ones over the years. She's often being chased in her dreams, as a recurring theme. My themes tend to be travelling (and things going wrong), trying to dial rotary phones (and screwing up one of the last digits), trying to find my locker in high school, realizing I haven't been going to a course in University that now has an exam or assignment due, or finding awesome comic stores or collections. All but the last type are usually frustrating.

Bad Dreams? I Love 'Em (Mostly)!

Jim Hinckley posted recently about Doctor Who giving him his first nightmare. That made me think about how I generally love bad dreams, whereas it seems like most people are terribly worried about them. If that doesn't warrant a blog entry, what does?

As background, I've never quite understood why people get so worked up about scary movies. The first movie I remember seeing was (some version of) The Phantom of the Opera (I think it was the 1962 film with Herbert Lom, of Pink Panther fame, as the Phantom. But that's just a guess because I was probably only 5 or 6 years old, based on where I remember seeing it and when we lived there.) I remember it being extremely scary at the time, although I doubt it'd even give me pause now. But I also recall my mother worrying that I'd get nightmares from seeing it, which of course made me wonder what that even meant. It almost sounded like a bonus to me: first you get the movie, which was a huge treat to me, and then you get a nightmare! As a kid, and in fact ever since, I generally remembered my dreams when I woke up. If someone were to ask me, right after I woke, what I had dreamed about, I could generally tell them about at least one or two dreams I'd had, though not many details about it. Other people I've met have claimed they almost never recall dreams - what they actually say is "I usually don't dream" which of course is nonsense, but it's their perspective - and this state of affairs boggles my mind because I can't think of the last time I awoke without some sense of what I'd dreamed.

Similarly, I'm never really sure what distinguishes a nightmare from a dream. If we say a nightmare is a dream in which something bad or scary happens, then probably most of my dreams fit that definition. But they usually don't depress me or cause me anxiety, because often those are the dreams I enjoy the most! For one thing, if the dream's about something awful happening (someone dies, I make some horrible lapse in judgement and go to jail, the world's about to end) then it's such a relief to wake up and realize it was only a dream! And some of the scariest dreams I've had have also been the coolest, from my perspective. I distinctly remember a dream I had, when we lived in our last house, in which the Martians from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds had landed and were moving through the area, using their death rays. In the dream, I went out to our backyard, which was on a small rise in reality but a higher one in my dream, and watched the war machines off in the distance, lighting up the night sky each time they'd fire. I was able to just stand there and stare, drinking in the grandeur of the scene playing out before me, and I wasn't scared at all, possibly because I partially realized it wasn't real (I frequently figure out I'm dreaming while it's going on, to varying degrees... have to blog on that another time!). When I woke up from that dream, that scene was all I could think of, and I brought it back to mind for days afterwards.

I'll admit that I occasionally will have a dream that bothers me. I had one a few weeks ago in which a young woman was operating as a crossing guard at a busy intersection that I was standing at. One of the kids waiting to cross was in a hurry to get home and begged the woman to let him go, and so she did. As the kid was crossing the street an extremely fast car came racing by, hitting the child and decapitating him, right in front of my eyes. I saw the head rolling violently away from the body, and could only think how sorry I felt for the crossing guard. I could see her face, as the realization dawned on her that she'd never be able to get past this poor decision that she'd made in a heartbeat; that, in fact, in the span of those few seconds she'd ruined the rest of her life. I experienced so much empathy for her in that dream, that when I woke up it was like she was a real person and I wanted to find her and console her. That dream bummed me out for awhile that day. But I've probably had a dozen or fewer dreams of that sort in my life.

When Tammy was little, we used to let her watch scary movies that other parents would've reported us to Child Welfare over, had they known. But we did it gradually, starting with tame fare like Silver Bullet and working up slowly to the good stuff like Alien and Psycho. At each step, we made sure Tammy realized it was all make believe, and we always checked that she wasn't being given nightmares (or if she was, that they weren't bothering her). And of course we also checked that she was enjoying the movies, since this was supposed to be a treat, not a punishment! She can certainly weigh in now, as a full-grown adult, as to whether or not it warped her in the end. But it certainly seemed like she reacted the same way I had: scary movies are just for fun, and you don't take them seriously once they're over. And similarly, dreams are just dreams.