On my favorite stoop this morning, I was thinking about dreams. Voluminous works have been written about them, but we are no closer to explaining the phenomenon that occurs when you dream about someone and then see that person the next day. BAM! — you freeze and try to fight the feeling in your stomach or in your heart, because maybe you killed him or maybe you kissed him in the dream, but you really have to work to convince yourself that it didn’t happen. You feel awkward. There are strange parts of life that we will never fully understand. It is like a beautiful fog that settles on our shared experiences, keeping us all out of focus.
I have a crazy imagination. My dreams are so vivid, they cling in the morning like funny monkeys, and I have to pry their small fingers from around my mind so that I can get on with my day.
Two nights ago, I dreamed that it was the first day of school. I had the students sitting on the floor around my chair as I read a book aloud. Suddenly, one boy in the back called me a mean name. Then the entire class of sixth graders started chanting that name and moving in closer. I dropped the book and told them to go back to their seats, but I never got control of the class. I hurried out the door to go find help, and the kids followed me in a mob down the hallway, chanting. I ran from them, trying not to cry. When I woke up in the morning I thought it was real and said to myself, “I have GOT to email the principal today to tell her that I have started the year with a REAL problem on my hands.” Then I remembered it was just a dream and felt very relieved.
Last night, I dreamed I was in Texas right before my trip here. My friend was a boxer (she’s not in real life) and she flew to New York for a match. A couple days later, I saw on the 6 o’clock news that she had died from a new disease called NARC (pronounced Nark). NARC has a five-minute incubation period once it gets into your system, so after she touched the potent NARC germ on a stair railing, she dropped dead on the sidewalk before she reached the next city block. I woke up this morning, still believing it was real, and I lay there with my eyes closed, thinking, “I probably should cancel my New York trip. Maybe I can postpone until next year. I REALLY do not want to catch NARC. I’ve made my decision: I am NOT going to Manhattan!” Then I opened my eyes and saw a tall apartment building out my morning window and said, “Oh, crud. I’m here.”
By FAR, the most vivid dream I have ever experienced happened a few years ago. There has never been anything like it for me. I dreamed Tom Cruise and I were best friends. It was a GREAT dream! We ran around all day, just hanging out, Tom and I. We did not have to do anything special in order to have fun. He didn’t take me to the French Riviera or out on his yacht. Really, we did fabulously ORDINARY things: fishing at the lake, mudding in his truck, painting the shed, and other stuff I can’t remember. We might have cleaned out the garage, for all I know, but all of it was terrific because we were laughing so hard the whole time. The laughing! Tom Cruise and I had inside jokes! We were the coolest friends, and we couldn’t get over it. We would look at each other and say, “Can you believe this?!” We were so happy.
Now, I am not sure why my subconscious mind picked Tom Cruise. It’s not like I have ever cared about what he’s doing on the entertainment news. I am not attracted to him at all. Besides, that wasn’t really a big part of the dream. I mean, he DOES have slightly crooked teeth, which are an adorable bonus to me, but other than that, not much. In fact, I loved it that the whole world of women saw him as a sex symbol, but I got something much better. All they got was Tom in a tux. I got the Tom who smells like sweat, has grease on his knuckles, and sometimes spills ketchup on his t-shirt.
I woke up the next morning, still thinking it was real. Picture me smiling when I brushed my teeth. Really smiling. Then I fixed my breakfast and sat down (still smiling) and thought about calling him.
That’s when the bubble broke.
“Tom Cruise … is … not my friend,” I whispered out loud, realizing far too late that it was just a dream. I dropped my spoon, staring straight ahead in shock. “Tom Cruise is NOT my friend! How CAN I call him?! I don’t even know his phone number!” It took my breath away. For a second, I didn’t know what to do. It was like suddenly discovering that someone dear to me doesn’t even know I exist. All our fun … just evaporated. There were no fish. There was no mud on the tires. There was no paint on our noses. My racing heart echoed in the kitchen.
The most horrible part was that the monkey-dream kept creeping back and grabbing hold of my thoughts all that day. I might be driving past a place where Tom and I had shared a happy memory and I would smile. Or I would want to call real quick and tell him something funny that just happened.
By that afternoon, I started getting serious about convincing my mind that it wasn’t real. At a stoplight I would have to slap myself in the face, “Snap out of it! Tom Cruise is NOT your friend!” *smack* “TOM CRUISE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!!” But it kept happening.
My heart broke all day long.
And when I see a picture of him, even to this day, I feel sorry for him. Because he doesn’t know how great we were.