I hate listening to people’s dreams. It’s like flipping through a stack of photographs. If I’m not in any of them, and nobody’s having sex, I just don’t care.”
So says Dennis in the first ever episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and I couldn’t agree more.
I don’t often describe my nightmares to others, but lately I’ve been plagued by them.
I wake up sweating, shivering and practically falling out of my bed. It’s especially annoying since my bed is lofted about four feet high and I’ve already tumbled to the floor once this year.
In one of the most startling recurring dreams, my teeth fall right out of my mouth.
Maybe my subconscious is speaking to me. In my mother’s voice. Telling me to wear my retainer.
Even though it seems stupid the next morning, I wake up legitimately terrified.
I eventually broke down and asked my roommates about the content of their dreams.
One said she often dreamt of bra shopping. She said she’d find herself in Aerie buying bundles of cute underwear, only to wake up the next morning expecting to find them in her dresser.
I was stunned by the dullness. It sounded like the “Seinfeld” of dreams.
Admittedly, bra shopping is nightmarish for most women, but not for this particular friend. Her dreams are normal – pleasant even.
Meanwhile on the other side of the wall I’m dreaming about home invasions and driving a car without brakes. Not even a cool car. I’m behind the wheel of a ’93 Jeep.
If Freud is to be believed, these nightmares are the “disguised fulfillment of repressed wishes.”
That theory is somewhat compatible with my friend’s, but makes absolutely no sense for mine.
Any carnival psychic will tell me the teeth represent my self-image and the car represents my sense of control and yada, yada, yada.
It doesn’t matter what they mean, or if they mean anything at all. I just want to become the kind of person who goes bra shopping in her dreams.
Scratch that. I’d rather dream about losing my teeth.
Really though, how does one go about this so-called sweet dreaming? Watch less “Dateline” and more “Seinfeld?” Don’t eat Chipotle after 8 p.m.?
School-related anxieties might be getting the best of me. My ten-page paper that I haven’t thought about since reading the syllabus four months ago appears at night as an alligator in my kitchen. (Not to be confused with the elephant in the room.)
We’ll see if the nightmares subside over winter break. Otherwise I’m blaming Chipotle.
