Do you remember your dreams?

Is a dream a lie when it don't come true, or is it something worse?

As a kid I remembered dreams pretty often.

After adolescence I rarely if ever remembered my dreams.

About 10 years ago I found out I had sleep apnea, started using a CPAP, and since then I remember fragments of dreams from time to time.

Unfortunately they usually don't seem to be very remarkable (few guest appearances by Scarlett Johannson, I don't end up ruling the world, etc etc). Occasionally I see dead people (parents, grandparents) but they don't seem to have many insights of sage advice that really apply to current events.

I've read and heard you have to get into REM sleep (15 minutes or so of uninterrupted sleep) to have dreams. With apnea, when you're waking up every 60-90 seconds, you never get there.

I'd say about half the time, I realize it's a dream while it's in progress. Sometimes it's very realistic and I do a double-take when I wake up, but just as often about midway through, there's a "aha" moment when I figure out it's a dream. Sometimes it's irritating/disconcerting/disturbing, but usually, I just go, 'oh well, this must be a dream' and roll with it.

 

I often remember them and have a few that recur pretty regularly. The best ones are the ones where I have control of The Force.

The one I dream most often involves me running - lately it's been in road races - but I'm so light, as if filled with helium, it's like I'm running on the moon. My feet barely touch the ground and I can't run nearly as fast as I want or need to.

 

I hate when it happens. Well, sometimes I hate it.

This happened a while back when I was out to dinner with some friends. I said 'We've been here before.' One of my friends looked at me and said 'This is a new restaurant. How could we have come here before?'

I had a dream about going to this place a few months before I actually went. The dream was that vivid.

 

yeah, KY, mine are down to the conversation. It will be something SO mundane, like me asking someone where the dressing room is in a store. But I will recognize the person. It's almost like one of the visions Raven has in "That's So Raven."

Wait, did I just type that out?

 

That sense of deja vu can be an absolute mindfuck.

 

The last time I remembered a dream I had, I woke up and decided that my father had actually wanted me to break up his company to prove myself. </nerd talk>

Seriously, though, I remember a good slew of my dreams. I don't remember them for a long time mind you, but I can usually hang on to them long enough to analyze them on my commute, assuming I don't want to listen to Stern at that particular moment.

The most vivid dream I can remember is when I was about seven or eight. I had just watched Tales from the Crypt and had a dream where I was running from the Cryptkeeper at night (I don't know why though, he's way fragile and I could probably have taken him). Anyway, he chases me into a public bathroom and then, for some reason, I decide to take a leak. It felt very, very real ... and then I woke up and realized I pissed myself. First and only time it's ever happened. (Honest).

The only recurring dream I have involves me working as a cashier at Stop & Shop. I don't know why I keep having this but I can bank on it occurring at least once a month or so.

And to the posters who mentioned deja vu, I get that all the time. It's gotten to the point where I can almost predict what someone is about to say, in my head of course, right before they say it. I just don't realize it until the words have just escaped their tongues though so I can never get it before they say it, it's like a delay of 0.123 seconds.

 

Last night's involved me playing guitar at a concert. I remember I couldn't never get the mic stand to stay at the right height, and the place cleared out pretty quickly when the crowd realized I have no musical talent whatsoever.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the moderately-sized crowd dispersed when I was doing woeful background vocals on the Jackson 5's I Want You Back (the baby's and yowww's, etc.) Which makes me think I was at least saying that in my sleep. Hope the neighbors got a kick out of that one.

 

The more tired I am, the less I remember dreams.

The more stress I have at work, the lighter I sleep and the more I remember my dreams.

 

I remember my dreams.

But Dean Singleton crushed them.

 

The more bizarre the dream, it seems, the more likely I'll remember it -- a 28 Days Later post-apocalyptic world, being trapped in the boat tunnel from the original Willy Wonka movie, being locked in a K-Mart after hours with hungry tigers roaming the store, etc.

The one that sticks with me to this day involved me getting married. I was back in the church my family used to frequent in my hometown, standing at the altar but not quite knowing what was happening. From the far end of the aisle, in walks a friend with whom I'd been close from middle school through college, wearing a bridal gown. What stays with me more than anything is the immense pride and joy I felt, so much so I thought my chest was going to burst.

Of course, since my subconscious hates me, the dream ended just as she got to the altar. I woke up alone on the floor of a near-empty apartment in Nowheresville, Oregon (in fairness, I slept on the floor to begin with). I punched the floor so hard my hand was throbbing for a week. Sleep was out of the question, being as innervated as I was, so I went to work and started pounding out roundups. It was an afternoon paper, so I'd have been there in four or five hours anyway.

 

I remember one where a T-Rex led by Colonel Mustard were chasing me through a seemingly endless hallway in what was my house, and Mustard was shooting at me with a rifle. I woke up this morning gasping for air, feeling like I was going to die, and had no idea what I had dreamed about.

 

How many people experience lucid dreaming? I'm often able to talk my way out of a nightmare. In the dream I can tell myself, "This is just a dream, don't freak out" and then change the direction of it. Or tell myself to wake up, just before I'm going to be shot/stabbed/fall, etc. The next step is being able to control them better before you fall asleep. I have a ton of nightmares and they're always the same. Wish I could somehow contorl my thinking to eliminate them (or stop eating cheese and drinking milk before bed, which is why I have nightmares, according to my wife, as the tough digestion makes your body work harder, or something).

And I remember mine because they're so often the same. I've replayed my final high school basketball game hundreds of times in my dreams and only once did I ever win. Damn it. And always am missing a shoe before a basketball game, or have two right ones. The other recurring one is something involving math class, always failing.