Saturday, January 30, 2010

Worst type of dream

I like it when I dream that I'm flying. It doesn't happen often, but it's always fun. I also like to dream that I'm falling, plummeting off a high cliff or out of an airplane. I always jerk awake at the last minute, and lie in bed smiling at the free adrenaline rush. I like that. In these kinds of dreams, my mind takes over my body and lets it do impossible things.

Sometimes my body takes over my mind and hijacks my dreams.

The worst example of this is when my body's bladder is full, but my body's brain is not ready to wake up and haul the rest of the body's appendages into the cold to empty said bladder. The bladder always takes revenge by inserting itself into the dreams.

We start by having to interrupt the dream sequence to find a public restroom in dreamland. In the dream I go in, do my thing, come out, resume dream activities, only to have to find another public restroom immediately.

After a few trips, the bathrooms begin to change. They get progressively more and more reasty. Urine on the floor. Missing doors on the stalls. Crowds of people staring through missing doors and floors sticky with mess.

And my dream companions, naturally, begin to get more and more annoyed with me. Can't we get on with normal dream activities here? Hello! Surely there's something more interesting in your subconscious than this? And I keep getting more and more annoyed with the dream sequence. Another bathroom? Didn't we just take care of this a minute ago in this dream? What is going on here?

Then my alarm goes off, and I wake up in the cold darkness, and see that it is past 6:00, and realize I have to pee really badly. So I get out of bed and walk across the floor into a tiled public space with a trough along the far wall where I can squat and take care of things, provided the smell doesn't get to me first ---

And then the alarm goes off again and I realize I haven't actually gotten out of bed and my bladder is going to burst if I don't get up, so this time I roll out from under the covers and walk across the hall to the wide room carpeted in green industrial loop carpet where some sort of business meeting is going on, but I make my way to the far corner to the lone toilet standing in its own black stain ---

And then the alarm goes off again and this time I really get out of bed and make my way into the living room where someone is trying to sell me a new micro wireless robot which will follow me around providing internet everywhere, which sounds like a really great idea except I can't pay attention now, I have to find the public bathroom which should be through that door on the left ---

And then the alarm goes off again and this time Jonathan walks in and turns on the light, and I feel Tim roll over and get out of bed and mumble that he's going to go use the bathroom ---

And that is it! I am up and out of bed and fully awake, because if I have to wait to use the bathroom I will pop.

2 comments:

Letterpress said...

I loved this! I have the same experience--thought it was just my old age getting to me. I have a great fear that I won't be able to interrupt Dreamland enough to wake up one night, and then. . .

Okay, that's a nightmare.

Laura Dee said...

How awful! I only have those recurring, progressively worsening dreams when I have a high fever.