2000-12-15 - 21:49 MST

December 16, 2000

Weird, Wonderful Dreams

I have read that dreams are one's subconscious gone berserk being without the restraint of our blue nosed conscience. Maybe so, with nothing riding herd on my dreams, I have flown with the eagles, explored the seas with the whales, sailed on Windjammers and many other neat things.

As a little child my dreams were always quite pleasant, one was of having a brother or sister, another was of finding silver dollars rolling down the sidewalk to me. Nice things, no dreams of viciousness or violence or degrading any body.

Things went along swimmingly, I went to bed anticipating great adventures in my dreams, except -- when I would get sick, I guess when I had a fever, my dreams would turn into immensly, terribly frightening nightmares. One I would have when sick was I felt myself shrinking at an alarming rate realizing I guess what a smaller than atomic individual I was. One of them featured a beautiful birthday cake, candles lit and all the fancies -- suddenly the cake would expand in all directions and I would shrink to a mote. As near as I can figure even my subconscious was trying to cope with the enigma of space, which I puzzled over until I finaly accepted the fact of infinite space beyond us. The hugeness terrified me in my dream state.

As I grew older and not prone to fever so much, my growing system and the hormones started boiling and seething through my veins, my dreams were exciting and pleasant yet I would wake up a bit tired. Gee I wish I had met some of those girls in real life, in my dreams they had the same way of thinking, wishes and actions as I did.

When I began courting Heather my dreams were of her and of the life we would have together. I hoped when I woke in the morning that they would come true. As we went along, things I dreamed about, some of which would be nightmares were loss of a job, dreadful sickness of my mate, later on dreams of hovering over the sickbed of one or another of our children.

I wasn't constantly in auto wrecks, the first one I was in someone else was the driver. I spotted a speeding car coming toward us, down the block and although we were on the through street, at the intersection that car did not stop and I watched it hit us broadside. Our car contained no injured people, the driver of the other car had her knees cut up. She was ticketed, and my friend had his car repaired. Many times in my dreams I would be sitting in that car without enough time to warn the driver of our car and watched the accident in progress, helpless as I was in the actual accident.

There were fender benders a time or two but nothing big.

We had four kids when our new little Henry J was hit broadside causing significant injuries to two of the kids and myself. Heather was thrown out, the oldest boy got a cut finger, the youngest daughter got shook up. The other two kids had skull fractures and were in the same hospital I was but they would not let me up into a wheel chair to see them. My back got messed up and several ribs broken as well as the functioning of my bowels, which locked. Occasionally I still have a nightmare about that and reliving the accident, not even seeing the other car as he ran the stop sign he could not see. But in my dreams, the rending crash of metal, seeing Heather prone in a puddle of rain water escalate in my dreams Heather drowned in the puddle, scenes of severed arms, smashed faces horrible, unbelievable things happen in my nightmares.

Years later I was rear ended and spent two weeks in hospital with a whiplash, came out wearing a cervical collar. The only nightmare I have ever had over that one was the sound of crunching metal and the peculiar sound of an accident. Not too many years ago on the way home from my third shift job a man ran the red light at Quebec and Martin Luther King Boulevard and broadsided the Pinto of ours, totalling it and my only injury was the reinforcement in my nightmares of the sound of crunching metal and the sound of the accident.

We had driven back and forth to Oregon in the summer, made a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a trip to Mount Rushmore, a trip to Mesa Verde and trips in the mountains in the fall to see the Aspen trees put on their show. All of this we enjoyed very much. I loved to drive and I loved to ride shotgun for Heather.

Since the accident in 1997 where I ended up with a broken neck, driving or riding in an automobile now, is a matter of necessity and not pleasure. I am not Agoraphobic, I go, I just don't like the getting there and back.

But the dreams I have about that one will be with me forever I think, and in each dream Heather is hurt worse.

Now though, pleasant dreams are coming back a bit, happy, deleriously joyful dreams. I hope over a period of time to again experience those Weird, Wonderful Dreams . . . . . . .

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