I’m off to bed, but I thought I would mention that I keep having this very weird recurring dream. In it, I have my college degree and beyond, but for some reason I am taking my senior year in HS again because apparently I never graduated from High School and don’t have my diploma, although no one knows that except for apparently the High School. So I am 42 years old trying to fit into those damned seats and basically a high school student again, but here is the problem- I never go to my classes and fail everything and the dream ends with me panicked and sweating with a C+ in English, a B in History, and F’s in every other class. And it is not like I am intentionally skipping them, I just keep getting drawn back into my real life to do things and miss the classes.
Like I said, it is just totally weird. I kind of like the dreams as I am falling asleep where I am chasing someone through different decades of my life and I barely catch up to him or her (it varies) and just as I am about to reach out to them and make contact I have a hypnic jerk and wake up. Obviously I don’t like waking up.
I kind of also like the other dreams where I am flying, but not conventionally flying like Superman. I have to flap my arms, and it jumps me up two to three feet off the ground, and if I keep flapping like a jumping jack I can get up to a couple hundred feet in the air and then the current carries me where ever it will and I just have to flap my arms every now and then to maintain altitude, and it is exhilarating but in the background there is always the fear of crashing to the earth or being spotted by people. That’s a fun dream.
Or the one where I am just falling and falling and falling through the air and then land in a pool of cool, clear water and come up to the surface for breath and then fall through the bottom of the pool and then start falling and falling and falling until I land in a pool of cool, clear water and and come up to the surface for breath and then fall through the bottom of the pool and then start falling and falling and falling until I land in a pool of cool, clear water John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt, his name is my name, too…
Spaghetti Lee
Ah, dreamblogging. Last refuge of scoundrels! What the hell, I like it anyway.
I’ve been having some real kickass dreams recently. There was one I still remember where I was a professional lion jockey. Like horseracing, but, you know, with lions. I made sure to file the patent right when I woke up.
Gian
in undergrad, I had a professor tell us before the final that (paraphrased) that the shrinks tell you you will have a dream where you are taking a test and don’t know any of the answers, this is that test
Fordpowers
I have this recurring dream where I am suffocating on gum.. I keep trying to pull it out of the back of my throat and it just keeps coming like a scarf from a magicians mouth… What do u think that means???
Hah!
That Other Mike
Damn, Cole, your mind is a goddamn mess.
Sebastian
I have the same reoccurring dream about high school. Exactly the same. I dream it once or twice a year, it has been a while since the last time.
Never dreamt about flying but I hope I will.
Cacti
I have this recurring dream where it turns out I was one class short of graduating high school/undergrad/law school. So I have to go back and finish it.
Last night it was taking a high school class as a 30-something.
YellowJournalism
@Cacti: I have that same dream all the time, except it’s a very specific math course I took an incomplete on. Freaks me out more than my reoccurring zombie nightmares.
Joey Maloney
I constantly have that “back in school” kind of dream. It’s either high school or college, and it’s end of term but I haven’t been going to classes and I’m trying to figure out how to not go to finals.
Last night, now, I had this dream where I had this vintage 1950s Cadillac convertible that was also somehow a Schwinn bicycle, and I was on a road trip with these four guys to attend the meeting of the Congress of the Confederacy where they debated surrendering to the Union. But we stopped at the university where my niece was going to school and she was very forceful when she told me that no matter how much he came on to me, I shouldn’t sleep with her gay bear friend.
Now, I do have a niece and at one point a few years ago when she was an undergrad she bawled me out because I made out with one of her friends. But aside from that absolutely nothing in this dream had any resemblance whatsoever to any real people, places, or events. So go figure.
jl
I think a lot of people have dreams like that. I do. Cole should tell us about his really weird dreams. I will if he will.
But no matter how weird, the problem is always spicy food before you go to bed, and tight shoes. And pants that ride up your crotch and crowd your bunghole. Everyone knows that. Peas! Eat your peas porridge, but not hot, before you go to bed.
Now, you damn kids get off my lawn. I’m sick and I have to get up early tomorrow. (And that is actually true. I thought flu season was over. Why do I have the damned flu again this season?)
Bruce S
I’d lay off the pepperoni and change my brand of whiskey.
jl
I guess a weird dream I had was when time kept slipping around. Stuff would happen, then time would slide backward, and shit did not get done. Not done at all. And then it would start all over. Or time would go forward too fast, or skip over stuff, and… shit.. stuff got damn done, except stuff was missing in between, and it turned out that it didn’t get done after all.
It was a frustrating dream. Glad I woke up out of it before I went crazy.
Edit: We could talk about boring dreams. My favorite boring dream was I walked into a room and my aunt was reading the newspaper. It was quiet. She was about to say “huh, look at this” (I knew that somehow) then I woke up. That was pretty boring. I dunno why I remember it.
bruins01
Is that not a dream that every single college graduate has a million times in his life? Like the going to school wearing nothing but your underwear dream.
Yutsano
My dreams are a bit different. Very rarely are they implausible scenarios. Instead, they usually involve people in my life who normally would have never intersected interacting in some fashion. And there are some people I never dream about, such as the NYD. It’s odd. I’d be a Jungian nightmare. :)
Cacti
The weirdest/funniest dream I ever had was one I shared on here previously in a similar thread…
I was some sort of ghost whisperer whose job it was to help restless spirits make peace with their greatest personal disappointments in life.
One of my charges was former NFL kicker Scott Norwood of Buffalo Bills/Super Bowl XXV infamy (who isn’t even dead). Somehow or other, I’d helped him come back to life, and he had one more shot at a game winning field goal with the Super Bowl on the line.
He lined up to kick it, the ball was snapped, but I guess his body was still a bit decomposed, because when he went to kick it, his leg came off at the knee and went twirling through the air.
My wife woke me up to ask me why I was laughing hysterically in my sleep.
Roger Moore
That’s funny. I always figured Cole for the kind of guy who would have the dream about going someplace and forgetting his pants. Oh, wait! That actually happened with the DNC.
raycharles90
You need to drink less, or more. I have always had a hard time for the first couple minutes after waking. I always think I need to complete some strange task and it takes a few minutes to shake it out.
Nicole
I’m very reassured to learn I’m not the only one who has the high school anxiety dreams.
So I assume then that everyone must then also have the dream about their brother having a son who’s a lizard and you accidentally eat the lizard son and then spend the rest of the dream trying to escape from your vengeful brother who wants to kill you.
Right? We’ve all been there?
(puts hand back down)
I get along very well with my brother. Really I do.
(slinks away)
ploeg
That’s ’cause you don’t know everything now like you did when you were in actual real-life high school. Next!
dance around in your bones
The dreams that bug me are the ones when you are trying to eat a piece of cake or snarfling up some really good drug but you never quite get it to your mouth or nose or whatever.
It would be so great if you could indulge your bad habits in your dreams, but it never seems to work that way.
taylormattd
That’s the whiskey dreaming for you. Same thing happens to me.
The prophet Nostradumbass
A few nights ago I had a dream where I saw a news report that Caltrans had to tear down the entire new eastern span of the Bay Bridge and start over because of the breaking bolts problem.
NotMax
Don’t remember dreams, although presumably I have them.
In over sixty years, there have been three and only three exceptions to that being the case.
Schad
I don’t have ‘flapping arms to fly’ dreams…rather, in practically all of my dreams, that I can flap my arms to fly is a given. It’s not particularly impressive flight (maybe 15-20 feet up at most, with real effort), and it’s a perfectly mundane form of short-distance transportation.
One of these days, I’m going to go and stand in a field somewhere and flap my arms for a few minutes, just to try to convince my subconscious that flying does not work that way. Or, perhaps, I’ll take off.
NotMax
@Schad
One too many viewings of Brewster McCloud?
Eljai
I skipped a semester of gym in 9th grade and they told me I’d have to make it up before I graduated, but I never did. But I still got my diploma. Thirty years later I still dream they take away my diploma and make me take that gym class. I did not like gym.
Yutsano
@Eljai:
This precise reason is why I marched in high school.
Suffern ACE
@Yutsano: your school district gave you gym credit for walking with a tuba?
Yutsano
@Suffern ACE: A lot of districts do. And trust me, it’s a helluva lot more than just “walking”.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yutsano: My high school’s band became a “marching” one the year after I graduated. For some reason, I got fitted for a uniform I would never wear.
Kdizzle
I had a recurring dream for several years after I graduated from high school that I was somehow forced to repeat my senior year for some reason unexplained.
Though when I returned to complete my senior year I could never remember my class schedule or my locker combination.
Odd.
Darkrose
I occasionally wake up sweating from a similar dream: I missed a required class in high school, and if I don’t go retake it now, my Stanford degree will be invalid. For some reason, one of the most stressful parts of the dream is trying to find a place to park. Even if I’d been able to drive back then, I would have taken the CTA to school, and in the dream, I know that, but I insist on driving and can’t find a parking space and I’m terrifying I’m going to be late.
Interesting that so many of us have those dreams. I wonder if it’s a geek thing, where the idea of being back in high school is nightmare fuel.
gene108
I kept having high school dreams a few years ago. I’d not turn in assignments or attend a class or something and thus not graduate. I used to get very stressed out that I wasn’t going to graduate high school.
Then in one dream it hit me that I already graduated from high school, so it wasn’t a big deal to skip class because that’s not going to cause me not to graduate.
For whatever reason realizing I had graduated from high school during these dreams made me sleep easier.
worn
Good Lord, John Cole, get outta my head. I’ve had this exact same dream more than once & we’re about the same age. Thought it was just me.
[west coast +7]
ETA: the 1st one
Cacti
Just saw that another GOPer Senator came out in support of marriage equality: Bill Nelson from Florida.
So, if DOMA repeal came up for a vote, that puts the yeas at 54. A clear majority but not quite filibuster-proof yet.
Sargeant Pepper's Spray
Shit Cole, I had to laugh at that one. I have an MA and a JD and I have that exact same fucking dream at least once a year!
Fort Geek
My most recurrent theme is having to use the restroom. I’m inevitably in a university or mall, some enormous building or group of them. I go down a hall, knowing full well there’s a restroom just around the corner…nope. It’s a janitor’s closet or storefront. Keep looking, seemingly for hours.
Occasionally I’ll find one–tiled walls & floor, rows of stalls–but when I start trying to use one, It’s suddenly in the midst of a busy room (cafeteria, cubicles, etc.) and people are shouting advice (as if I don’t know how). On the odd chance that this doesn’t happen…I still can’t go.
So I’m off hunting yet again, it’s right around the corner, or in the next building…then I wake up having to go to the bathroom.
Sargeant Pepper's Spray
Shit Cole, I had to laugh at that one. I have an MA and a JD and I have that exact same fucking dream at least once a year!
Linda Featheringill
Erik Erikson [1902 to 1994, student of Freud] would say that you have left a developmental task that should have been done in late adolescence. Your subconscious is saying that you need to go back and work on that issue.
[Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development: http://psychology.about.com/od/psychosocialtheories/a/psychosocial.htm ]
Freud would probably say that you’ve been having unacceptable thoughts about young women and your subconscious wishes you were young enough to not be embarrassed by these thoughts.
:-)
OzarkHillbilly
Lucky bastard. Waking up. Ooooooh what I wouldn’t give to wake up. Waking up would mean I got to sleep, at least a little bit anyway. Lucky bastard.
OzarkHillbilly
Truth is, I did get to wake up this morning… At 1 AM. Arthritis in my shoulder was just killing me, felt like someone was tearing my arm out of the socket, so I got up, took a Vicoden, went back to bed, waited for it to kick in, after 30 mins I finally began to feel a lessening of the pain and….
Was wide awake. Lay in bed for another 2 hrs before I finally gave up and got up. 3rd nite in a row this has happened.
Went to see the doc yesterday to beg for a cortisone shot to alleviate the pain, she finally gave it to me but said it was the last time. So my options now are surgery, amputation, or death. Not sure which is the best option.
NotMax
@Cacti
Now that would be news, as Senator Nelson is a Democrat.
The 4 Democratic Senators who have not yet publicly mouthed support: West Virgina’s Joe Manchin
Arkansas’ Mary Pryor
South Dakota’s Tim Johnson
Louisiana’s Mat Landrieu
NotMax
No idea how that slipped by.
Obviously meant Mary Landrieu, not Mat, in #41.
Mea culpa.
raven
Dreams are weird, no shit. I try to get it across to my wife that listening to people recount their dreams is about as boring an activity as there is.
Linda Featheringill
dear raven,
i dreamed that you and i were in this meadow and . . .
Still boring? :-)
raven
@Linda Featheringill: Why do I think that’s a nightmare for you?
Linda Featheringill
@raven:
LOL!
dewzke
Scheet, I dreamed I went back to my outsourced job last night. Woke up and got pissed again.
Randy P
I have had periods in my life where I had what I call “adventure dreams”, which sometimes had elaborate plots and many characters and were practically like a movie. I enjoyed that a lot.
Then briefly during my last job, a job I thought I was enjoying until I realized in the last year how much it had changed for me, I started having the most boring dreams imaginable. I would actually be at work in my dream, just doing normal cubicle stuff and talking to my ordinary work colleagues. And I would wake up and feel sad at how I had wasted dream time on that crap.
My dreams are interesting again, thank FSM.
My favorites have always been dreams that involved these huge buildings that are composites of many buildings I’ve known, with lots of corridors and hidden areas. I went from a tiny elementary school to a huge middle school in a 3-story building that had been a high school, and those dreams feel like the awesome feeling I had all through middle school of just being turned loose in all that space.
Flying is often a part of my dreams too, but it’s not a magical thing. I just seem to have trouble staying on the ground, or getting back to the ground once I float off of it.
This could all get deeply Freudian if somebody started reading and analyzing this thread.
@Schad: My flying never involves flapping. More just thinking about it.
raven
The Farmer’s Market opens this morning!
raven
While riding on a train goin’ west
I feel asleep for take my a rest
I dreamed a dream that make me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.
With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ and singing ’till the early hours of the morn’.
By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words were told, our songs were songs
Where we longed for nothin’ and were satisfied
Joking and talking about the world outside.
With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never thought we could ever get very old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
Our chances really was a million to one.
As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices they were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split.
How many a year has passed and gone
Many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a first friend
And each one I’ve never seen again.
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.
raven
Now THAT’S a dream.
NotMax
@raven
How goes the beetle experimenting?
oldster
school dream? check. Had that one in many variations.
flying dream? Check. You describe it extremely well, except mine is a little more of a breast-stroke action. But the same constant effort. Keep flapping, and you fly. I like those dreams, a lot, though in the dream itself the flying is always fairly mundane and not ecstatic.
Falling into pools en abyme? Nope. never had that one in any variation. Not that I can recall.
low-tech cyclist
I seem to have a new semi-recurring dream – semi because I’ve only had variations on it maybe three times yet.
But in the dream, I’ve robbed a bank, or joined the Army and am about to be shipped overseas, or something else that basically involves my having thrown away my life as it currently is, not being able to be with my wife and son for Lord only knows how long, and wondering what in the world possessed me to do that.
I’m always glad to wake up from these dreams.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Cacti: Bill Nelson’s a Dem, or I at least thought he was when I kept voting for him all these years.
raven
@NotMax:Good, I checked yesterday and almost all of the exterior has fallen away. I have realized that the end product that my friend has is just the top of the skull and that is probably as far as I’ll go with it. I do see examples of a total reconstruction but I don’t think I’m that interested in that level of detail. . .or work.
Randy P
@raven: We tolerate it in our house. I’ll listen if she feels compelled to tell me one of hers, and vice versa.
Early in our marriage I had one where I had married an old friend (in real life this person was never even a girlfriend, though at one point I’d tried to date her) instead of my wife. And we ran into my wife on the street, who was married to somebody else. I was completely desolated and knew I’d ruined my life, that I’d made a terrible mistake.
I don’t believe in dream “interpretation”, like a rooster means you’re thinking of your Dad. If I’m thinking of my Dad in my dream, he’s there. I think the message my brain was telling me in this one was pretty damned clear.
You can bet she enjoyed hearing that one. I always tell her I know where my bread is buttered cause we both remember that dream.
raven
@low-tech cyclist: I didn’t rob a bank, just a petty JD, but the rest of your dream was my reality.
raven
@Randy P: Yea, you are right.
Bob h
I have a dream similar to the first all the time. If there any psychologists patronizing this blog, I’d like to know what the origins of it are likely to be.
donnah
I’ve read that the high school dream is an anxiety dream, and that you’re worried abour something that’s coming up that you aren’t prepared for, or you’re facing a problem you don’t know how to solve.
Flying dreams are happy ones, where you leave the boundaries of earth and are free.
I had a nightmare recently when I was staying away from home by myself. I haven’t had this one since I was a little girl. I dreamed I was sleeping in the bed where I was actually sleeping, sort of a dream inside a dream, and it was very dark, and I could hear the bedroom door open slowly, and I could hear the floorboards creak. I was paralyzed and couldn’t move or shout out, and then I felt the pressure of someone sitting down on the bed next to me. I was screaming inside my head to wake up, but I was frozen. Just when I felt the presence nearly touch me, I woke up screaming.
Ii hate that dream.
John O
I have the exact same one, and it is wonderful. But it has been a long time, and I miss it. Among all the recurring dreams Cole noted, I have ’em all except the last one.
Scott S.
My recurring dream is more of a recurring dream character, as she’ll tend to show up in any kind of dream and take it over.
She’s a little girl, about 6-8 years old, blond hair, wearing a yellow or orange dress with matching sneakers. She’s a ghost, and she wants to kill me. She stalks me around for a bit while I try desperately to avoid letting her touch me, because when she touches you, you die, in the dream, in real life, and in every other possible way.
Then I wake up and cower for an hour or two, because I just know that if I open my eyes, she’ll be right there, smiling that evil little smile.
RSA
Like a lot of other people, I’ve regularly had both the school dream and the flying dream. (In my dreams, I’m a young adult, still with dark hair.)
Several years ago, I dreamt I was wandering through my university knowing that I had a class to teach and yet unable to remember where the classroom was. I sometimes tell my students about this dream, and they laugh. It never ends.
JPL
When the ending of a novel, movie or tv show doesn’t satisfy me, I change the ending in my dreams. Did you know that the last episode of Chuck, Sarah and Chuck walked hand and hand on the sandy beach? There was no ambiguity and the one magic kiss worked. I mentioned to a son how much I enjoyed the ending and received stares in return. lol
Liquid
GOD-FUCKING-DAMN MICROSOFT. If I possessed the power EVERYONE would burn at the stake. Fuck asphyxiate, I would keep them on pure oxygen until they burned. Kawksukkers.
Oh sure, game played since ~ ’02 now it’s denied. Line every last one of them.
Problem is shooting them is too quick/too good. A little water-boarding/cutting/fuck you fucks is in order.
At least Microsoft will now become the Sony of the last decade. Thanks, in part, to Microsoft being ‘guided’ by fucking morons.
Remember kids, skill does not matter when it comes to wealth, dumb-luck is the only thing that matters!
Caedite Eos!
I used to have very similar recurring dreams 15-20 years ago when I too was unaccountably back at school and having to retake exams even though I was in my 30s or 40s.
Suspect that its a weird sub-conscious attempt to escape back to a simpler time in my life (being a nerd before anyone had even coined the phrase I wasn’t hugely happy at school but was fucking brilliant at taking exams)
kerFuFFler
I have had the high school dream where I am taking a test when I realize that I have not been to the class all term—–and then I realize that this is not the only course I have been dodging—–and then I remember that I also have a paper due, if only I could remember what classroom I need to go to turn it in. Since I have skipped all the courses I don’t even know which room it’s in. Then I have an orgasm and wake up—–I kid you not!
I experience a similar dream where I am traveling and one thing or another keeps me from getting to the airport on time—-then the orgasm.
Several years ago I was traveling with my two young kids—–OK, many years ago—–and ten minutes before I was going to drive us to the airport I lost the key to the rental car. Between fits of swearing I found myself wondering, “where’s my frickin’ orgasm now?!?”
I’m flying to Dallas today—-wish me luck!
Nick
I flap my dreams when flying too, and also have the fear of falling. I have degrees from college and law school, and the dream is that I have still got to finish some exams, haven’t been to the classes all year, don’t know where or when the exam is, and am wondering whether I can still graduate if I fail the exams.
Oddly, I was just talking with a friend last night who has very similar college dreams.
Omnes Omnibus
I have the school dream about once a month. Usually college or law school. It is near the end of the semester and I realized that there are (usually) two classes that I have blown off entirely and now term papers/finals are imminent/etc., and there is no way I can do the work – not even in a half-assed way. It never goes beyond that point. It is never that I have blown off a case at work and the filing deadline for a brief is just around the corner; it is always school. I wonder why.
Liquid
If there was such a thing as “justice,” Microsoft would go instantly bankrupt, this second.
But, alas, there is no such thing as justice. Remember, “Justice is only karma without the satisfaction…etc.:
At this very moment, 0535, I would relish in nuking the entire state of Wasington…even though I live in Seattle.
currants
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
So YOU are why I had to wear that uniform with the pants too long and the sleeves too short!
Yah, that was so there were enough uniforms to go around the next year. You don’t think it mattered WHO the uniform fit, do you? As long as it fit someone, somewhere, once, in theory?
ThresherK
Weirdsville time: Whenever I dream about people (particular or in general) I have the strange ability to “know” in the dream that I’m in one of several situations:
I’m married (to my real life wife),
I’ve gone back in life to before I met her,
There’s someone who doesn’t look like her but I can tell it’s her,
She’s predeceased me,
or (shudder) I’ve never met her.
Liquid
Probably something to do with that complete moron Orthy. I mean there are Morons and then there are Douchebags that failed ‘Basic Marketing 101.”
So, out of nowhere and, not since ’02, I need to sign in, watch me sign in and then it freezes. As a semi/non-violent loyal consumer —
FUCK YOU MICROSOFT. YOU BLEW IT AND YOU DESERVE TO PLAY SECOND FIDDLE TO SONY FOR THE NEXT DECADE.
Craig
http://xkcd.com/557/
Suffern ACE
@Craig: yep. That is the one I have. It’s advanced calculus. I get stressed. I then remember that I graduated and go on dreamining.
Schlemizel
I have this reoccurring dream where shitty things keep happening to me. I won’t bore you will all of them but trust me they are things that don’t happen in normal life (e.g. a bladder that does not properly sense it full so it stretches until it can hold 4 liters & has to be manually drained every day – WHO HAS THAT?). Anyway, as I said these dreams are just one bad event after another.
But when I go to sleep the dream stops & I have a rest from them until I wake up again.
Jennifer
I had a dream to top them all. In it, I was working with a group of anthropologists/archaeologists in Central America. We were looking for a rumored site called “the Monster Pit” by the locals, so we’re hacking our way through the jungle with machetes looking for this place, and all the sudden we hack our way into a large clearing, and it goes B-movie, because suddenly it’s nighttime, and there are tiki torches burning all around, and drum music, and in the middle of this clearing, there’s this huge, deep pit in the ground. At first I’m afraid to look into it, but I go a little closer, and see that it’s full of … wiener dogs. The orange ones. And it’s not just full of wiener dogs, but they are stacked up in columns ala Yertle the Turtle, with the dogs on the bottom standing on their hind legs, with a dog standing on their shoulders, and another dog standing on the second dog’s shoulders, and so on and so forth, stacked up like 12 dogs high. And the dogs on the bottom are walking around, so it’s making it hard for the dogs standing above them to keep their balance and all these columns of wiener dogs are swaying around. And the dogs on the very top are almost high enough to reach the top edge of the pit, and whenever they get close to the edge, they scrabble their front legs around because they want to be petted.
Then I woke up, laughing.
Fort Geek
I don’t have flying dreams. I “skate”–without skates. Just push off with one foot and I’m cruising along.
Amir Khalid
@Scott S.:
Hmm. Now I’m wondering how you’d react if you met this little girl in your waking life.
maurinsky
I never had school anxiety dreams, but I frequently have a dream where I have airplane tickets and I’m trying to get to the airport, but I can’t seem to get packed or out the door.
It beats my childhood anxiety dreams, in which giant sinkholes would open up in the ground in front of me all night long.
I had a flying dream once, it was incredible – people were dancing in the streets below, and I turned over to look at the sky and it was filled with shooting stars. That was one magical dream, I woke up feeling elated.
Lavocat
I see you’re off your meds again …
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Liquid: Does this mean you’ve been forced into dealing with Windows 8? I’m about ready to nuke Redmond over that monstrosity.
Betsy
Damn, I have that school dream, too, John! Only it’s about law school.
We must be soul mates. Will you marry me?
Betsy
@maurinsky: oohhhhh, wow!
Betsy
@Jennifer: I laughed til I shed tears. Thank you for sharing that.
Scott S.
@Amir Khalid: I’ve actually worried about that. A lot.
master c
My dream is someone in the deans office calling me in to say I never made up those Incompletes, so I never graduated. Think it’s a classic stress dream.
cmorenc
@dance around in your bones:
I occasionally have dreams like that about one or other women I knew at some past point in my life who I had the hots for…she’ll be willing and naked (or in the process of gett ing such) in the dream, but something always happens to distractingly interfere with our actually consumating the chance.
Mnemosyne
@Scott S.:
I have a feeling you may have seen either this Mario Bava movie or this Fellini short at some point.
ETA: That, or your recurring nightmare is more universal than you thought, at least in Italy.
The Golux
@bruins01:
I’ve had many dreams like that, but all of them lacked underwear.
I’ve also had the never-been-to-class dream.
The one I have most frequently now is that for some damn reason we’re still finding things to do at our old house (we moved twelve years ago) and trying to get them done before the current owners show up.
Susanne
I’m two for three. Given the similarities, consider yourself lucky you’re not a woman, or you’d be spending a lot of REMs repetitively looking for a clean bathroom.
dance around in your bones
@cmorenc: Yeah, it’s like dreamus interruptus. Bummer!
moderateindy
People should look into the concept of “lucid dreaming”. It is a technique in which you can actually recognize that you are dreaming, and can control the dream. So you can do things like fly and the like. It also has interesting possibilities when it comes to solving particular problems. It doesn’t work for every dream, but the more you practice the more often you recognize that you are actually dreaming.
My school dream is that it’s the end of the semester and I have blown off so many classes that I’m not even sure what my schedule is, or when or where any of my finals are. I attribute that to my habit of only attending lower level classes on test review and test days per the syllabus and blowing off the rest of the classes.
Bob In Portland
Have a recurring dream where it’s the last day of semester and I find out I’ve been enrolled in a class I’ve never attended and I have to take the final exam and, of course, I don’t even know what the class is about. In real life this only happened one semester.
As a former letter carrier I have a recurring dream where I’m put on a route I’ve never carried before, and I’m struggling sorting the mail in the office (sometimes there’s no labels on the case where I’m supposed to sort the mail) and when I get out on the route it goes on forever, there are huge heavy parcels, the city is shaped like the US and I’m starting downtown which is around Atlanta and I have to get to Seattle. And it’s raining and the addresses are washing off the letters, and the lawns of the houses are knee-deep mud and I keep sinking. And the sun is going down and there are packs of wild dogs circling me and I’m hanging on the side of a cable car.
Sometimes I also have sex with the girl who sat three seats ahead of me in the geometry class almost fifty years ago. She was the drum majorette for the band.
Fwiffo
These are the exact same dreams everyone has, so don’t worry. Apparently people continue to have high school dreams until the day they die.
The only difference in mine is that the architecture of the school has become very strange, and the flying dreams involve getting a running start (or going down a twisty-slide at a McDonalds) instead of flapping my arms.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
Hey, I have the high school dream, too. I guess it must mean something, but I’ll be damned if I have the first damned clue what the hell it could be…
serena1313
John,
We already know all the answers, we just need to ask the right questions. Often our dreams provide those answers. However, interpreting dreams is tricky not just because they are so elusive and uniquely symbolic, but because it is difficult to decipher messages from our subconscious. Nevertheless our dreams especially recurring dreams, in my experience, are trying to tell us something important.
Your 3 dreams appear to be intertwined IMHO. If interested here are some questions & thoughts that may or may not apply to your particular situation, but hopefully will give you some insight that might help you interpret your own dreams or parts thereof:
In your first recurring dream, for instance, trying to fit in a uncomfortable chair (too small for any adult) is symbolic of a larger issue. You might want to ask yourself if you feel a need to fit-in, but don’t know where or how or don’t want to or because it is too uncomfortable? By asking yourself questions of this nature — or perhaps of a completely different nature altogether — something usually begins to emerge.
Do you feel something — like a lesson in life maybe — is missing Do you know what it is? If so, how does it or does it relate to the aforementioned?
The other recurring dream with you chasing someone, but never quite catch seems to tie into whatever you are looking for — the missing piece of the puzzle. Every person we see in our dreams is a different aspect of ourselves. So the person you are chasing is yourself — the part of you that has the missing piece.
In the next dream you describe a fear of crashing or being seen, but could that fear be translated into fear of finding your answer/s? Coasting along allowing the winds to carry you is fairly self-explanatory …
Clear water is symbolic of seeing clearly & thinking clearly. Your view from the sky might indicate a need or an ability to distance & detach from a certain situation or circumstance to understand whatever it is your subconscious is trying to tell you.
I cannot say for sure if any of this is the case or even applicable, but you do know and that is all that matters. Whatever you decide to do or not do is your choice.
John, one last thought FWIW: most, if not all, of us, myself included, tend to avoid certain situations that we feel unprepared to deal with or uncertain about how to deal with or fearful of and so we often find something, anything to keep us too busy, distracted & occupied to even stop long enough to contemplate and deal with it. I say this because my recurring dreams and nagging thoughts did not stop until I did … take the time.
serena1313
@OzarkHillbilly:
I would suggest going to a rheumatologist ASAP.
When the pain (mostly in my hands) just kept getting worse & I realized it was not temporary I finally went to a rheumatologist. After extensive testing (X-rays etc.), he told me I had 2 different kinds of rheumatoid arthritis — there are over 100 — that had spread through-out my entire body. So he immediately put me on methotrexate (MTX) along with an anti-inflammatory drug for the pain until the MTX kicked-in which takes anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks. Now except for the occasional flare-up, Iam basically pain-free. He also told me that if I had waited any longer, I might have been crippled for life. Thankfully we caught it in time.