Why I Didn’t Keep a Dream Journal

Recurring dreams are a common phenomenon…

Except in my head.

Instead of recurring dreams, I’d have “recurring dream concepts.”

If I held my breath in a dream I could glide short distances. (This was before learning that’s how Kitty Pryde’s phasing power worked.)

If I went left off of my driveway, through the twisty trunk bushes, I’d arrive “Up the Lake” in a similar grove of twisty trunk bushes near the mountain behind our cabin.

If I entered a public rest room, it was huge. 

CRAZY HUGE!

Room after room in a seemingly never ending set of connections.

Occasionally large enough to have other facilities (gymnasiums, schools, water parks, whatever) within them.

I never found out if these internalized add ons had their own bathrooms within them, or used the ones around them.

Having established my brain is a terrifying place to visit, and there is no way I want to live there, I’m going to describe the only recurring dream I had in my childhood.

The dream begins as I am walking along the sidewalk around my friend’s house down the street.  Each time the dream recurred, I walk with a different friend, for reasons which shall become clear shortly.

The scene dramatically shifts (as my dreams have always had a highly cinematic quality to them) from the two children enjoying a stroll on an idyllic suburban day, to the control room of a flying saucer in high Earth orbit.

The aliens revealed at the controls look like potatoes.

No, not Sontarans, this was well before I became a Doctor Who fan.

Just potatoes.

Following a close up featuring a musical sting (Highly Cinematic) one of the potatoes’ tentacles/eyes/roots/whatever the proper name for an alien potato appendage is/ comes into shot and pushes an evil looking, red flashing button.

Back on earth, whichever friend I am with vanishes in a puff of smoke, I run around frantically looking for them, and the dream ends.

This same scenario plays out night after night, with only the hapless friend being different.

Then without a warning, or even a coming attraction, it changed.

The dream begins as I am walking along the sidewalk around my friend’s house down the street.  However, this time, I am all alone and understandably filled with a great deal more dread than previous strolls.

The scene dramatically shifts (as my dreams have always had a highly cinematic quality to them) from the one child enjoying a stroll on an idyllic, if somewhat panicked, suburban day, to the control room of a flying saucer in high Earth orbit.

This time when the potato alien uses its tentacle/eye/root/whatever the proper name for an alien potato appendage is/ to push the evil looking, red flashing button, it is I who disappear in a puff of smoke.

I reappear in a cage in the experimentation lab underneath the house we were walking around.  I know this, because even though it looks exactly like one would expect a dungeon run by evil scientist potatoes from outer space to look, it still has the small windows near the roof line that my friend has in his basement. 

All my friends, kidnapped in previous dreams, are here in cages as well.  The experiments of the potato aliens are turning us all into creatures that have been deformed to the same extent the animator did to Daffy in 1953’s classic Merrie Melodie Duck Amuck.

Due to everyone’s highly modified physical forms, the locks and bars of the cages designed to hold humans are easily circumvented once we calm down and plan a bit. We overcome the potatoes without much additional effort (likely because, they are potatoes,) reverse the effects on ourselves, destroy the machines, and escape through the small windows near the roof line that my friend has in his basement, even when it has been transformed by evil alien potato scientists.

However, as I walk up the hill to my home, I notice my shadow is not normal, but has a distinctly unnatural flower shape at the head, and flag on the tail I’m pretty sure I don’t normally have.

Dun Dun DUUUUUUUNNN!!!!

Yes, my dreams actually go, “Dun Dun DUUUUUUUNNN!!!!”

HIGHLY Cinematic.

Click here (next week)to see why I continue to not document my dreams with any regularity.