In Your Dreams

I have wild dreams. It's a fact. I've always had wild dreams. And I remember a lot of them. I don't really buy much into the "dreams mean important stuff in your life"business, so mostly I just think they're funny or weird. Often they relate in some way to something I've just talked about, thought about, or seen on TV. Sometimes they're scary. I had a scary dream last night and poor Adam nearly got heatstroke because I was snuggled up so close to him in bed. My dreams are so vivid and I can remember them so well, a lot of times they're still playing in my head when I try to go back to sleep. I had a scary dream one night about Dwight from The Office being a rapist. I have no idea where that came from but I couldn't watch The Office for a few days afterward.

These wild dreams began very early on. I can remember waking up in the night when I was a little girl and "seeing" a grasshopper on the pillow next to me. I got out of bed and made my parents check all the covers to make sure there wasn't really a grasshopper in my bed. I'm sure they were annoyed.

After watching Jurassic Park I dreamed that there was a brontosaurus walking around outside the apartment building where I lived. He was friendly. The T-Rex terrorizing the rest of the town was not. My neighbor and I fed the brontosaurus vegetables from the second story balcony until the T-Rex scared him away. Then I woke up.

I had a dream one night that I was going to prom. All my high school friends were getting ready together. I pulled up in a car and when I got out, I was 8 months pregnant! What?! To make matters worse, I was wearing a short, white dress with a cut-out around my bellybutton. Seriously? None of my friends seemed to think it was tacky, but we ended up skipping prom to stay home and play nintendo. Oddly, I wasn't in high school or pregnant when I had this dream.

I even dream when I take naps. If I fall asleep watching TV, my dreams usually have something to do with whatever is playing. I fell asleep watching something that was followed by a show about King Kong. The dream I had was about King Kong eating my parents. Yep, he was HUGE and just tossed my parents in his mouth like popcorn. When I woke up I shared my dream with one of my roommates and she thought it was hilarious. I don't know if my parents being eaten is that funny, but from that point on she forced me to tell her any dreams I could remember.

A discussion about dreams isn't complete without a recurring dream. Sure I've had the typical "can't remember my locker combination" and "can't remember my class schedule" dreams, but there is one recurring dream I had for years. In this dream I was either in the shower or trying to go to the bathroom and people, usually people who I know, keep coming into the room. Over and over I ask them to leave so I can finish, and over and over they ignore me. I get more and more frustrated because I'm going to be late, but they just won't leave me alone. As the dream goes on, nothing really changes except that I end up completely frazzled. The dream takes place in various locations...my college apartment, a locker room, a school where, in the dream, we had taken cover during a tornado, houses that I've never seen before. It's a strange dream and I have no idea what it means. To make it even more bizarre, this recurring dream isn't unique to me. My mom has the same one. Freaky!

Shortly after we got married, I told Adam about my recurring dream. Of course he thought it was weird and added it to the list of quirky things about his new wife. Oddly, that very night I had the dream. Adam and I were at a party and there was no bathroom in the house. The only toilet option was a bucket-type contraption in the basement. Strange, I know, but this is dreamland so anything can happen. As usual, I had to go, so since I had just told him about my recurring dream, I specifically asked Adam to keep people from coming in while I was perched over the bucket. He totally dropped the ball! I guess he got distracted or something, but there I squatted pleading with random party-goers to give me just one minute of privacy. I was ticked off and I let Adam know it. How could he abandon me like that after I had just told him it was one of my biggest frustrations? Obviously this all happened while I was sleeping, but the next morning I woke up mad at Adam for leaving me hanging like that. He just laughed at me.

And I've never had the dream again.