A Bit Unsettling

I watched a documentary last spring about dreams. In it, people recounted their dreams, experts explained the science of sleep and dreams, and by the time it was over I was feeling informed and doubly fascinated. It seems that the average person's dreams often follow a pattern. You are somewhere, you aren't sure how you got there. Maybe you are seeing familiar places and faces, maybe you are seeing places and people who aren't familiar but your dreaming mind tells you that they are. Sometimes dreams are strange and comical but then as certain areas of the brain become stimulated during the sleep cycle, the average person's dream often take on intense overtones: violence, fear and sexual themes. If you are someone who remembers their dreams, take a moment and think about this. The last dream you remember probably started out normal- a recap of your day, harmless scenes playing out like a movie. Suddenly things will begin to change-- a situation becomes sexually charged, or you begin to experience deep fear, or someone around you (or even you) will become violent. And then, you wake up.

Last night I was dreaming about some mundane thing when suddenly I was sitting in my car, parked at night with the windows slightly cracked. A couple of boys from the neighborhood (one I recognized, the other I didn't) came up to my car. My initial thoughts were "What in the world is he doing out here at  night by himself?" Then the kid I didn't know began to harass me and I became apprehensive. I rolled up the windows and locked the doors and thought it was a little absurd that I felt the need to protect myself from a kid who couldn't be more than 10 years old. He told me that he was going to steal various items from me that he knew I had in the car, that he was going to throw rocks at the windows and break them, that I couldn't keep him out. The little boy I know wasn't really going along with it, but he wasn't protesting either. Eventually I talked him into going away. Then I got out of the car and walked over a nearby building, I think it was a restaurant. As I got to the door it opened and his mother came out. I said that there was something I had to tell her that was going to upset her but she needed to know her son was out at night with this other kid and they were harassing  me. I remember being very afraid at how the mother would react to me; I was afraid that she would be angry at me. Then I woke up.

This is not the scariest or most intense dream I have ever had, not by a long shot but it is an example of how at the end of the sleep cycle a harmless dream can turn into a psychological thriller or a steamy love story. Next time I will opt for the steam.

Lesson: Analyzing and ultimately understanding something that frightens or disturbs us usually disarms it.