Once upon a Dream

Jacob and I both dream. Most people do, but while Jacob says that he loves dreaming and has vivid, colorful dreams most of the time, I, on the other hand am scared to go to sleep at night. I have the craziest, most intense and stressful dreams! I am not exaggerating. In the past 6 months I have had dreams about everything from kidnapping the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il (who turned out to be a midget, by the way) to detonating nuclear bombs that kill my entire family. I have dreamed about prison, being married to other people, and also a lot about death. Three nights ago I dreamed that I robbed an elderly widow in my ward of all her food storage and canning supplies and that it amounted to enough food to fill a giant semi-trailer. (My brother Dave happened to be the accomplice on that one. We were hotly persued by the FBI and in the end the old widow woman said she would drop all charges against me if I would buy her food storage for over $22,000. She was a crafty one, alright!)

Jacob says that these dreams only seem to indicate that I am lacking adventure in my life and need some excitement. Excitement? I will have you know that I have an overdue library book right now, okay?, Mr. Daredevil...

Jacob has dreams of flying (and other super abilities), piloting a startship in space, winning things- you know, cool stuff! Why can't I have dreams like that? The other ability that Jacob possesses is that of having what they call "lucid dreams" where you know you are dreaming and therefore, can take control of the dream. This is baffling to me! I have never been dreaming, realized it, and then consciously been able to change it. Never.

I also believe that my nocturnal torment is hereditary. I have had conversations with my Mom about her dreams and she says that any dreams she remembers are always very intense, with the most common dream being that someone is hiding and waiting to jump out and scare her. If you know my Mom, this makes perfect sense. I just feel bad that she is tormented by this scenario in her dreams, as well as in real life.

I fear that I will also pass along this trait to my kids. I know that Cindy already has some form of intense dreaming, she moans, whimpers, twitches, cries, etc. almost every night. (I know this because she is, unfortunately, sleeping right next to me when it happens).

Yes, the overriding theme in my dreams is that I am placed in some sort of situation where I either do something horrible, or something horrible happens to me and I experience true joy when I wake to find that it isn't true. Of course, I had to Google "dream interpretation" and get to the bottom of all this. And I am in big trouble because apparently dreams with disasters, being arrested, explosions, etc. all mean that something bad is going to happen and that I have tons of guilt. Aye Carumba! Let's just hope that tonight I have a dream about a rabbit in a refrigerator getting a tattoo, because apparently that means I will have good luck in a new stage of my life and all my nagging questions will be answered.