When I was just a wee lad, I lay in bed at
nights and dream. On some occasions, they were interrupted by warm streams that
ran down my legs and soaked the sheets. No, I wasn’t dreaming of a bath or a
swim in the ocean; I had not yet conquered the battle with my bladder. However,
it did come before too much longer. Those nighttime events either exhilarated
me or scared me to death.
Many nights I dreamed that without effort I
could rise and fly into the sky. My soaring in the blue took me to views of our
house and yard that I’d never before experienced. I suppose that being confined
to the home place brought security in the dream. Sometimes I pretended to be a
Superman as I jumped from the roof of the house. At other times, I ran along
the yard and felt a sense of weightlessness take me over.
In another dream, my family rode in our old ‘54
Chevrolet on our way to some unknown destination. The ride always included a
climb up some steep incline. Sitting in the back seat, I never could see the
road ahead, something that made me feel nervous. We’d finally reach the top,
but to my utter horror, the road would end, and the car plummeted to the ground
hundreds of feet below. That same sense of weightlessness existed in this
dream, but it was anything but thrilling.
As ridiculous as it sounds, I used to dream that
I had been shot. Yep, I could feel the pain from the blast, and when I looked
down, there in the middle of my stomach would be the shell casing from a
shotgun. What was even weirder was the fact that the would-be assassins were
cartoon characters, usually cats from the old “Mighty Mouse” series. The pain
from the wound subsided, but I spent most of the dream trying to dig the thing
out of me.
I’ve heard that this next dream is common. To my
fright, I would arrive at elementary school wearing nothing but my
“whitey-tidies.” I’d look down to discover my awkward plight and try in a
thousand ways to cover up my naked, fat body. I suffered through the entire
ordeal and
In later years, I dreamed of girls, but let’s
just skip that. In adulthood, I’ve most often dreamed about being once again
with my parents or older brother who have been gone for years. Just seeing them
was a joyful experience, although I never remember having touched them, and
they rarely, if ever, spoke. My lowest point would be when I awoke to realize
that all had been but a dream. That made me miss them all the more.
According to psychologists and other folks who
have studied dreams, these night-time mental movies are products of our
subconscious. Interpretations of dreams abound. Flying in a dream symbolizes
either freedom or lack of it. Falling in a dream might symbolize the feeling of
being out of control in life or in a particular situation. I think it just
reaffirms my fear of heights and of all roller coasters. Everyone has heard that
appearing naked in a dream is symbolic of the fear we all have for being our
real selves in life. It has also been said to represent our fear of being
ridiculed or disgraced. Being shot indicates that a person wishes to get rid of
some aspect of himself. I think it might simply be a fear of weapons. Last,
dreams about loved ones who have died is nothing more that missing those folks
and wishing that they were still around.
These days, my trouble isn’t the dreams I have.
Now, I can’t remember them. I might have had a spectacular venture in a night,
but all that’s left the next morning is a clouded memory or fragments of the
entire thing. Supposedly, some dreams last only short periods of time. They
seem like epic movies to me. I’m in no hurry to find out what it’s like, but
someday I hope I receive a pair of wings like Clarence did in “It’s a Wonderful
Life.” Then I’ll know for sure that exhilaration that has only been present in
my dreams.
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