By Jim Hagarty
The range of subjects on which to have a boring discussion with another person is probably endless, but about the worst item l can think of is the details of our dream lives.
How, I wonder, could it possibly be of any interest to me at all what crazy images blazed across the wide-screen TV in your head while you were unconscious last night? Unless you had recurring nightmares about your stabbing me 42 times with a 12-inch-long butcher knife while I sat in my chair watching a hockey game, any other spectacle played out in your brain during your REM cycles couldn’t possibly intrigue me.
And yet, people insist on describing to me, in vivid detail, every weird – and sometimes macabre – twist and turn and change of scenery and characters in the drama that was the dream they had last night. I am not denying that dreams can be very interesting, but only, I believe, to the person who experiences them.
As it happens, I dream like mad all night long, it seems, and if woken during the night, can’t wait to get back to sleep to see what’s up next in the lineup. It’s almost, ahem, a dream come true: channel-flipping all night long without the need to run a remote control and risk contracting carpal tunnel syndrome. Of course, what is truly frustrating is how dreams end just when they’re getting really good like having your favourite show interrupted for a major news bulletin and how you can never get that dream back again.
But if having people relate details of their dreams to you is tiresome, having someone interpret the meaning of your dreams is downright annoying. And there seems to be no shortage of people willing to take on, what would seem to me to be, such an arduous and unnecessary task. Now and then, I will make the terrible mistake of sharing one of my more memorable overnight movies with someone, only to have the meaning of each scene explained to me. I think it is the complete authority with which dream interpreters weave their magic that is so infuriating.
Years ago, I was told that if you dream you are free falling (like off a cliff) but you wake before you hit the ground, it means you are having a heart attack. Using this guide, l have probably had four or five hundred heart attacks so far in my life. (What I think might be really useful is if someone could tell me for certain why I keep getting shoved off this cliff.)
If, in your dreams, you discover yourself stark naked in public, it means you have been concealing some fact and need to reveal it. So there I occasionally am, in a mall or on main street, sauntering along stark raving nude.
If, in a dream, you hear someone knocking on your door three times, a family member has just died or is about to die, I can’t remember which. But when I hear it, I dig out my funeral suit and lay it out on the bed.
If you’re the bad guy in most of your dreams, it’s a sign of unresolved conflicts with others that need to be fixed. And, of course, there I am, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, baddest man in the whole damn town.
If you want a punch in the head, insult someone’s religion, make fun of their kids, deride their politics or career of choice. But if you really want a fight to the death, try telling a dream believer that dreams are nothing more than a nightly fireworks of the brain which occur because the subconscious mind gets a chance to run the show for a few hours while the conscious mind takes a breather.
My guess is, talk trash about dreams to a dream interpreter, and your tumble off the cliff might be more than just imaginary. Some people take these things very seriously. Having figured out who they are, don’t even dream about describing your dreams to them.
That can be a nightmare.
