Strange Dreams

I don't usually remember my dreams when I wake up, but when I do, they're usually very eventful, disturbing, and cinematic. Last night was exceptional in that way. So while knowing that listening somebody talk about their dreams is often about as exciting as listening to parents brag about their children, I'm still going to share the triple-feature that played in my psyche last night. First, I dreamed that I was a participant in a contest reality show similar to the ones where a bunch of women compete for one man, etc. Except here, a bunch of childless people were competing for the affection of one orphaned boy. We were each given one day at a time to spend with him, on a rotating schedule, in order to see how we got along and to try to win over his affection. He sure was a cute little kid: white-blond hair, cherubic face, full of little kid affection and funny sayings that seem wrong but end up being wise. After I spent the day with the kid, I got interviewed by the producers, and I was talking about how much I had really started to love the little guy. But in the back of my mind, I knew I probably didn't stand a chance against the other contestants, who were couples that did things like bake pies, take him to baseball games, and take him to the beach to play with their Golden Retriever, Jake.

Second in last night's line up, I dreamed I was visiting a swinger's party, by myself, in this very large house. I don't know why I was there, curiousity I guess, because I told a few people that I was just visiting and I didn't join in on any of the goings on. The party was a lot better than I've usually imagined swinger's parties to be, in the sense the most of the people were attractive, though there were also some older, less attractive people scattered around. I kept my clothes on and mostly just wandered around the house, watching people flirt, take their clothes off, and have sex. I got kind of freaked out by all this and went upstairs, where a women was watching a tape in a side bedroom by herself. I started talking to her, and this was the best part of the dream. It turns out that she was trying to study up for a defensive driving test. For those of you not in or from California, CA allows you to waive the fine and points on most traffic violations if you take a defensive driving course. The courses are not administered by the state, but by private testing companies. The tests themselves are pretty much a joke, and the companies come up with all sorts of ways to make their courses more attractive, so there are courses conducted by stand-up comedians, courses with pizza parties or all you can eat donuts, courses in all sorts of languages. You can take the courses online, and Blockbuster even rents out tapes that you can watch and then take the test. Anyway, some entrepeneurial spirit had made a pornographic driving test course. I didn't get a chance to really watch the tape, but it seemed to be telling the story of a woman driving around town to various "dates," so I think the tape may have also been trying to appeal to the swinger set. After a while, the woman got bored with the tape and went downstairs for a smoke. When I went downstairs with her, everybody had gotten into a huge jacuzzi together, and that's where the dream ended. It occurs to my waking mind that we might be sitting on a million dollar idea here with the porn defensive driving course, so if there are any "movie producers" reading this, cut me in on a piece of the profits.

Dream number three was the most disturbing of the bunch. Sara and I were on some sort of vacation with my family, though who was actually there was unclear. We had parked our RV at the curb and were walking into a large, busy park full of people enjoying a beautiful day. There were kids playing frisbee, people having picnics, balloons and icecream cones. As we were looking out over the park, somebody started shooting a gun at somebody else in the park, and suddenly the whole park was full of people pulling out guns and firing them off at people. The same people who 30 seconds earlier had been dishing up potato salad and tossing horseshoes. We hit the deck beside the curb, and as I was watching this all unfold, somebody started shooting at us. I watched the bullet tracks run in a straight line up the road towards us like in a WWII movie, and then the bullets cut right through our group. At that point, I realized my dad was with us, and that he'd been shot. I woke up just as somebody was checking his pulse and realizing he was dead. There was also a subplot in there about a weird guy with a Russian accent trying to take our picture and sell it to us, and I think he got shot, too.

All of the dreams were very graphic and precise in their details, down to the expressions of peoples' faces, the dialogue, and the "special effects." Feel free to analyse any of these dreams as you'd like, but given that I remember my dreams about once every couple of months, I figured it might be worth writing these down. Not sure what triggered all of that. Maybe it was the spicy stir-fry I made for dinner last night. I'll have to ask Sara what she dreamed about.