Reminiscing on dreams

 I got to the airport too early today, so I decided to treat myself to a drink while I waited to board my flight. All I wanted was a corona, and after searching around in desperation, I finally found one at a bar located just past the BNA security checkpoint. I sat there, sipping away, for the better part of 30 minutes or so, and as I sat, I found myself at a fascinating juncture. In front of me, a massive array of windows made visible the beautiful fall sunset, a complex fabrication of blue, orange, and red that made the perfect backdrop to the bustling of the airport. Behind me, numerous (apologies for the vagueness, but I’m terrible at gauging numbers, maybe there were hundreds of people, maybe dozens, maybe thousands, I couldn’t say) people were partaking in voyages to destinations unknown, living lives that I reckon I could never dream up with the farthest stretch of my imagination. And in between it all sat I, a living, breathing person, blessed with the abilities of observation and thought, the miracles of sight, critical analysis, and a vast depth of wonder all converging into one being. To be totally honest, that’s about as much description as I could put into my state of being in the moment, but, to be brief, it was kind of a trippy experience. Not to say that this experience was exceptionally unique, but for whatever reason, it just felt very monumental to be sitting in the center of the airport at that particular moment. Sitting there, in this somewhat surreal moment, my mind drifted toward something which I consider to be one of the most surreal aspects of the human experience: dreams. I don’t get how dreams work, but here are a few of my most memorable dreams from throughout my life.

The obvious starting point for this is earliest dream that I remember, which I believe was my first ever nightmare. The dream began in an arcade, but at this arcade all the machines had cartoonish faces in the region where you put the coins in and they could talk. I was in the arcade, playing this game on a red machine which had a Dreamworks style face, which included big blue eyes, and a friendly, toothy grin. After playing the game at the machine, I looked up to find that I was lost, which was one of my greatest fears as a child. I began crying, desperately looking for my mom all around the arcade, but to no avail. I remember one of my close friends at the time was in the arcade with me, but this was no consolation. I eventually found myself back at the red machine, which began to offer me words of encouragement and support, which again did not leave me feeling much better. Television had instilled in me a great sense of “stranger danger,” and to me, this arcade game was the epitome of that. Ultimately, however, the machine offered a message that would prove quite helpful, despite my extremely frightened state: the arcade game informed me that I was in a dream, and that if I woke up, I would no longer be lost. Heeding the machine’s words, I woke up, but not in my bed in my room at home. No, I had woken into the second part of the dream, where I lay in a bed in the middle of a field with rolling, grassy hills stretching out past the horizon. I was trapped in this bed, with about a dozen cartoonish-looking ray-guns aimed at me, each being held by arms whose bodies were outside my field of vision (or just didn’t exist). Petrified, I gazed into these guns aimed at me until I realized that I just because I had woken up from the arcade dream did not mean that I had woken up for real. Willing myself awake, I sat up in my real bed, in my real room, in my real house. I looked around to make sure I was actually where I thought I was, not trusting that I would ever really wake up again. In the end, I was ok, but this dream was certainly quite odd, and it’s kind of a wonder that I still remember it, seeing as I was like 2 or 3 when it happened.

The next dream happened when I was in third grade, and this one involved everyone in my class, so I clearly remember recounting many, many times at school the next day. I would be astounded if any of the people in this dream ever read this, and this would get annoying if I kept having to say “this boy/girl in my class,” so I’m just gonna go ahead and use names for the story. The premise of the dream is kinda odd, but essentially our class (the two combined 2^nd/3^rd grade classes at my tiny elementary school) went on a field trip to some sort of “treasure island.” To get to the island, we had to sail on these massive, wooden, Pirates of the Caribbean-type ships. There were two ships, and we were all split into two groups, with one group going to the island first on one boat, and the rest of us waiting to go when they got back on the second boat. I was on the second boat, and the “story” of the dream was told to me through letters, which were somehow being delivered to me from the first boat by my friend Jada. Apparently, when the first boat had arrived at the island, there was this tree with a treehouse on it, and this kid Ryan had climbed up to go explore it. When he got into the treehouse, he opened this cursed treasure chest, which unleashed a sward of ghost-pirates that attacked all the kids. One of them pushed Ryan out of the treehouse, and he fell and broke his arm. While people were helping him back onto the boat, the ghost-pirates started attacking kids and turning them into ghosts (there were definitely specifics of who got turned into ghosts, but I forget most of them). The boat began to sail back to the mainland, but my friend Theo was still on the island fending of the ghost-pirate. Theo was the fastest kid in the class, though, and he was able to run and grab onto the boat just in time to pull himself on. Unfortunately for him, he was not yet in the clear, and as he sat with his legs dangling off the back of the boat, a ghost-pirate pulled him into the water, and he became a ghost. Again, at the time of having the dream, there were a lot more specific names that came up in terms of kids suffering injuries (broken bones) or being turned into ghosts at the hands of the ghost-pirates. This one definitely stuck in my head so well because it seemed so pertinent for everyone to hear about it, even though a lot of people died and it certainly didn’t make it seem like I was a big fan of many of these people.

The summer before my senior year of high school, I started my first legit job as a summer camp counselor at a local sports camp. For whatever reason, this, and maybe other things going on at the time like COVID maybe, led to me having a lot of trouble sleeping, and when I would sleep my dreams would always be quite stressful. One of these stress dreams is honestly hilarious, but it genuinely spooked me at the time. The dream was pretty short, and was all done through the lens of my phone screen, where I was texting a stranger I had met online (throwback to stranger danger). The person seemed super cool, had similar interests as me, and was generally just felt like a person who I’d want to be friends with. In fact, I agreed to be friends with them, and we agreed that we would help each other in our own personal ventures in life. This became instantly regrettable when I asked what the person’s name was, and they revealed that they were, in fact, Osama bin-Laden. Of course, this sounds like a joke, but in the moment, I was really fucking scared. I had literally just agreed to assist bin-Laden with his personal ventures, so I think I was rightfully scared of ending up in Guantanamo. Anyways, this story is made even funnier by the fact that I told my co-worker about it the next day, and she asked “Who is that?” which was simply shocking, to say the least. I’d say her response is a large part of why I remember this so clearly, not to mention how fucking weird it was, and the fact that it actually really freaked me out at the time.  

I guess that’s most of what I have as far as dream content goes. I’m on a plane right now and figured I have a bunch of time to just write, but the only other thing I can think to write about is my real-estate phase, which I feel like deserves a post unto itself. If you remember any interesting dreams of your own, feel free to comment them if you have the gumption.