Weird Dreams
Several days this week I have awoken from strange dreams. They are all really odd topics and not at all like real life. Wednesday morning I woke up from being "Tina the tough girl" fighting off the bad guys. In the dream I was at my parents' house and someone was trying to break in. I called 911 only to have the Sheriff answer and tell me that no one was available to fight my crime. I told him "This is ridiculous! Well, I'll just take care of it myself! *click*". I then motioned for the robbers in a "come-and-get-it" way and mouthed "Bring It". Then I proceeded to man-handle them into submission. The next morning I dreamed that I was at a tanning salon where people were in tanning beds fully clothed. It made me think about my dream life.
When I was younger I dreamed about tornadoes. A lot. I would estimate that I dreamed about tornadoes on average once every two weeks. The tornadoes almost never got me. I was generally safe as a kitten. I assumed for years that the tornado dreams were just a by-product of a deeply held fear of storms. At some point in late high school, though, I had an epiphany about the dreams. I wasn't just dreaming about tornadoes, I was dreaming about warning others to get to safety. And no one would listen. Time and time again in these dreams I would spend my time begging people to heed my call to safety and each time it was as though my words had never been spoken. It was then that I realized the dreams had nothing to do with fear of tornadoes, but rather a fear of being ignored. The "Wizard of Oz" lost all power over me from that day forward. I can now watch the movie "Twister" without breaking a sweat.
I also frequently dreamed about looking for bathrooms growing up. Looking for relief was a regular theme in my dream life. Even if I was dreaming about something else, the underlying activity usually also included looking for a bathroom that was suitable. Generally I might find a restroom with no doors or with walls that allowed even midgets the ability to peer over into my stall. In some dreams, the bathroom was so filthy or unsafe that I couldn't bring mysef to go or maybe it would be a bathroom stall that required the user to do their "business" in a receptacle other than a toilet. In any event, the dream would continue on with me needing to use the restroom. Of course, in real life I had to use the restroom and it was just infiltrating my dream life. I consider myself lucky all these years that my dream self never found a functional toilet to use because I am convinced that it would have unleashed an embarassing and grotesque crossover into reality. In my bed. Yuck.
I read somewhere that our dreams don't mean anything, that researchers think dreams are just our brains firing off a string of unrelated memories and that we try to string those miscellaneous thoughts together into a reasonable plot. I think this might be true sometimes. The tornado dreams convinced me that the random memory theory of dreams isn't entirely true. Once I figured out the pattern of the tornado dreams and what they meant, the dreams stopped completely. Perhaps we need dreams to help us sort through the thoughts we don't even know we need to think about. Perhaps I have some unresolved feelings about needing to take care of myself because no one else is doing it for me (like the Sheriff who failed to catch my parents' burglar). Or maybe I just need to stop watching crime dramas before going to bed. Who knows? Maybe the answer will come to me in a dream while I'm searching for a clean, private toilet.
When I was younger I dreamed about tornadoes. A lot. I would estimate that I dreamed about tornadoes on average once every two weeks. The tornadoes almost never got me. I was generally safe as a kitten. I assumed for years that the tornado dreams were just a by-product of a deeply held fear of storms. At some point in late high school, though, I had an epiphany about the dreams. I wasn't just dreaming about tornadoes, I was dreaming about warning others to get to safety. And no one would listen. Time and time again in these dreams I would spend my time begging people to heed my call to safety and each time it was as though my words had never been spoken. It was then that I realized the dreams had nothing to do with fear of tornadoes, but rather a fear of being ignored. The "Wizard of Oz" lost all power over me from that day forward. I can now watch the movie "Twister" without breaking a sweat.
I also frequently dreamed about looking for bathrooms growing up. Looking for relief was a regular theme in my dream life. Even if I was dreaming about something else, the underlying activity usually also included looking for a bathroom that was suitable. Generally I might find a restroom with no doors or with walls that allowed even midgets the ability to peer over into my stall. In some dreams, the bathroom was so filthy or unsafe that I couldn't bring mysef to go or maybe it would be a bathroom stall that required the user to do their "business" in a receptacle other than a toilet. In any event, the dream would continue on with me needing to use the restroom. Of course, in real life I had to use the restroom and it was just infiltrating my dream life. I consider myself lucky all these years that my dream self never found a functional toilet to use because I am convinced that it would have unleashed an embarassing and grotesque crossover into reality. In my bed. Yuck.
I read somewhere that our dreams don't mean anything, that researchers think dreams are just our brains firing off a string of unrelated memories and that we try to string those miscellaneous thoughts together into a reasonable plot. I think this might be true sometimes. The tornado dreams convinced me that the random memory theory of dreams isn't entirely true. Once I figured out the pattern of the tornado dreams and what they meant, the dreams stopped completely. Perhaps we need dreams to help us sort through the thoughts we don't even know we need to think about. Perhaps I have some unresolved feelings about needing to take care of myself because no one else is doing it for me (like the Sheriff who failed to catch my parents' burglar). Or maybe I just need to stop watching crime dramas before going to bed. Who knows? Maybe the answer will come to me in a dream while I'm searching for a clean, private toilet.
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