They’re All Nightmares When You Think About It
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Does everybody dream? I don’t know if everyone does, but I do and I dream a lot. There seems to be several different kinds that pop up in the middle of the night. There are romantic reveries that are so lovely that when I do wake up, I want to get right back in to see what comes next. I try and try but I can never quite get there and moments later the lovely Sophia Loren is back in Italy and Mary is shaking me and asking why I am moaning.
I know Sophia is getting up there now (86) and she isn’t the slim and beautiful vision in a slinky yellow dress coming down the stairs in Houseboat; but no doubt I have deteriorated myself, but only slightly.
Please excuse me for a few minutes I must take a cold shower.
There are also those action dreams that seem so real and terrifying that I just have to start shouting and flinging my arms around and is one reason why Mary has a divorce lawyer on speed dial.
I guess we all share the one where we are walking bare naked on the main street. That was Rosie O’Donnell’s favourite in Sleepless in Seattle. I like that one too but I don’t remember Rosie being in it.
Of course, there are a few holdovers from when I was fifteen and discovered girls. They are the other reason that Mary… well, you can probably figure that out for yourselves. They were good though. So good my mother made me wear oven mitts to bed.
Then there are the embarrassing dreams! Some are just stupid like me standing before the CEO of Lotto 649 and listening to him say, “Trying to change a six to a nine is one thing, Mr. Foster, but with a red ballpoint pen?”
I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t even roll over, even worse, I couldn’t breathe but it turned out to be okay, it was just Mary holding a pillow over my face. She said it was the only way she could keep the neighbours from hearing me shouting.
Some of the other dreams are downright frightening and I wake up shaking. As a child (in my late thirties, early forties) I had a dream wherein I was constantly being chased by a rooster. It had little affect on my normal everyday life today except for the obsessive need to check out the original sex of chicken wieners. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but that S.O.B. was scary.
But what do they all mean? The funny ones, the romantic ones, and the wet-your-pants creepy ones? Does anyone really know? Do dreams mean anything at all? I have no idea. I have a friend who is a psychiatrist, but I can’t ask him; he thinks I’m weird already and when he sees me coming ducks into a doorway or immediately flags down a taxi.
Joseph, you remember him, the Bible guy with the technicolor raincoat, apparently Joseph could interpret dreams and he made a pretty good living listening to Pharoah’s nocturnal hallucinations every morning and coming up with some sage advice like, “A dill pickle and salami sandwich before you go to bed? Come on, your Pharoahness, give your head a shake. By the way, did anyone ever tell you that you are the spitting image of Yul Brynner?”
They seemed to dream a lot in the Old Testament. I suspect sitting around a campfire drinking fermented goats’ milk may have had something to do with it. That may also have led to a whole pile of begattings at the time. There are pages of them because it was B.N. (Before Netflix).
Lady Macbeth dreamed she would be a Queen which resulted in King Duncan having his spleen removed without the benefit of an anesthetic. There was hell to pay over that one and before you knew it half of Scotland was involved. At least Rosie and I strolling bare naked down Mississaga Street wasn’t that bad, although you wouldn’t know it from the reaction of Mayor Steve Clarke, the Alderpersons, and the members of the Downtown Management Board.
