Dreaming

Every night the kids ask me to pray for them so they don't have scary dreams. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. For kids, a scary dream is pretty darn scary. It wakes them up and makes it hard to go back to sleep. For me, a scary dream is like a free horror movie. All dreams are pretty entertaining once you've finally woken up and realized you aren't trying to run away from an angry mob.

One recurring theme in my dreams is it's the last day of finals. I have a final in a class I just remembered I stopped attending weeks before. I search frantically for the classroom but can't find it. I have that dream about once a month.

Another theme is finding rattlesnakes. Lots of rattlesnakes. I'm walking across a field and there are hundreds of rattlesnakes. I go downstairs and the floor is covered with rattlesnakes. There are rattlesnakes slithering out of my car. I wonder what this dream is all about.

Once when I was dating Tabitha, I dreamt I was racing my 1972 Datsun 510 down a mountain road. I was going pretty fast until I missed a turn, crashed through the guard rail, and flew into the air. I remember a sudden feeling of weightlessness and then I woke up.

When I was in the Navy on my way to the Persian Gulf I dreamt about a father who was angry with his daughter and killed her. That was pretty crazy.

Just today while napping, I dreamed I was travelling to another city with the kids. We were floating down a river on a small raft. We were making pretty good time too. We stopped for the evening in a small rustic town. My parents were supposed to meet us. I leave the kids by the raft and try to find a phone. I crawl through a small hole into a store. The young girl behind the counter lets me use the phone where I am dismayed to learn my parents haven't even left yet. I have to crawl through the hole again to get back outside.

Sleep would be pretty boring if we didn't have dreams to keep us entertained. I wouldn't mind if I stopped dreaming about rattlesnakes though.