Oh, no.....it's happening again. Never is it invited. It comes back around unexpectedly and stays for lengths of time no one can predict. It's colorful and dramatic and often gives me a good talking point to start the day at school. It's a torment and a comedy and a puzzle. It's....it's......oh, be brave enough to state it!.....it's my dream machine.
It rests somewhere deep in some brain structure----hippocampus? parietal lobe?----that has some cramped-up wiring, making it switch on every once in a while and go into overdrive. When those synapses fire up, the most bizarre and vivid scenarios go traipsing across the screen of my barely-subconscious mind in the moments before I wake, and then I am forced to go about my day so discombobulated that I hardly know who I am, because I often remember these dreams in the most irritating detail.
Case in point: Thursday morning I drove to school spittin' mad at my first hour. (There is no need to alert the authorities; I was not a threat since I have not been forced to carry a sidearm by the OK legislature....yet.) Why was I mad? That morning's show had featured an interaction in first hour, not really my real room or students, but that was the meaning. I was trying to give them directions near the end of class (my alarm was probably already ringing), and they were not very focused. I noticed some noises outside, from what sounded like all over the building: shouts, not of the good-natured kind we sometimes hear, but louder and angrier, and then a bit of chanting. My kids started to get up and mill around. I told them to sit----they started to push toward the door. Oh, that did not go over well; I jumped over in front of the door as quickly as I could and told them, nearly roaring, to park their backsides back in their desks. I could feel myself drawing up, the instinctive move I think is bred into most teachers, to become ten feet tall and bulletproof when events call for it. And, uh....I think that might be what did it: I pissed off the natives, and they.....CHARGED me like a herd of elephants, completely bowling me over and trampling me. A bit deflated but mad as any old woman you ever saw, I picked up and took off through what seemed the whole student body in a swirl of protests and chants. I somehow ducked through the crowd and found the door to Lori Helton's office, our assistant principal. Whether I went there for information, protection, or to rat the whole bunch out, I can't remember, and that's when I woke up. Unfortunately, I was unwise enough to tell this tale to my first hour class, who jumped on the detail that if all the students decided to rise up, the teachers wouldn't be able to do much about it. Thank you, Mister Sandman, for that waking nightmare.
The story I always tell to prove the colorful intricacies of my dreams happened when I was about 9 or 10. We had lived in our new split-level only a short time, and the big finished basement was my special torment. I was a nervous little kid, prone not only to nightmares, but to being afraid of every waking night terror there was: monsters of many varieties under the bed, in the closets, down the hall. General darkness was the very worst, which is why I hated the basement at night, even just going down the seven steps into the rec room---anything could be under or behind the pool table. I was also more than a little paralyzed with fear that the devil was out to get me, although I had no exposure to hellfire-and-brimstone theology that I can remember, and that the floor vents in the basement gave him easy access to our house. Put this all together, and you have a perfect storm for nightmares deluxe.
On this particular night, I had come across a feast of a dessert before bed. We had chocolate cake in the house, an unusual thing, and the ice cream we all have a tiny little obsession with. Oh, and wonder of wonders: Hershey's syrup. Mom said, "You'll regret eating that." I assured her that she was dead wrong; I savored every bite. Damn the consequences!
Yes, well, consequences arrived right on schedule on the dream train express from hell. I dreamed that the rec room in the basement was my bedroom, and Mom and Dad had allowed me to decorate it how I liked. (This had been a bone of contention from building the house, when Mom said I could choose the colors for my room, and I requested red carpet. Denied. That was the end of my input---thankfully, since the carpet that was actually chosen stayed for more than 30 years.) My tastes had changed by dream time; the most spectacularly elegant thing I could imagine was.......purple satin. This was a bedroom to rival any bordello, I tell you. Purple satin hangings from a four-poster canopy bed tented in purple satin, accented with white lace and satin ruffles. Purple satin sheets. Purple bedspread, purple carpet. I knew, in this dream, that I had created a masterpiece of elegance, refinement, and luxury. It was both beautiful and comfortable, and I couldn't wait to climb in that big bed to sleep. But before I could, lo! That old devil had come up through those floor vents, got himself a heaping helping of Hershey's syrup, and poured it all over that purple satin, ruining it forever. He must have used about 4 or 5 squirt bottles, because he hit every piece of material in that room.
It's been 40 years since I had that dream, and it's still just as vivid today as it was then, and a teeny tiny corner of my heart even breaks at the thought that I didn't get to keep that gorgeous satin pouf of a bedroom, dreamed up by my child's mind. I think that was the turning point in my devil-gets-me dreams. He knows I've been on his tail all these years, and he doesn't show up anymore. These days, when another lively round of dreams starts---sometimes lasting days, sometimes weeks---I know I can never know what to expect....but I know it'll be entertaining.
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