dream #28

I’ve had some variation of this dream about 3 or 4 times over the years.  The small details are always different, but the setting is always exactly the same.

Some dream friends and I are stuck in terrible traffic on top of a bridge.  The bridge, which is a vital means of transportation for thousands of people, is in the process of having a middle section repaired.  The whole section needs to

as unclear a diagram as they come

be replaced, so there is a large gap between one side of the bridge and the other.  Rather than closing the bridge and using one lane on the other bridge for the traffic, the highway officials opted for a much more complicated and dangerous way of managing the commute; moving each car individually across the empty space via a sheet of metal suspended by a floating crane.  The commuters are largely left to their own wits to get across the bridge – except for the operation of the crane by a worker below, every driver must drive their own car onto the sheet of metal and ensure that the car is perfectly set on the sheet so that there is no danger of the car sliding off into the water.

Eventually it becomes our turn to cross the gap.  None of us have ever crossed the bridge using the lift before, so we have no idea what to do.  As the crane swings the lift back over to our side of the bridge, I notice that there no obvious way to secure the car to the lift.  Not a single strap, just a sheet of metal and the cables supporting it.  I slowly drive the car onto the lift and we all get out and stand on the lift, holding onto the cables so we don’t slip.

The cran begins to move us, and almost immediately the lift begins to wobble.  About 10 feet from our side of the bridge, the lift shifts backwards, tossing the car, my friends and myself into the water below.

After the sheer terror of falling, we all surface and catch our breath.  We swim over to the beam supporting the bridge and pull ourselves up on it.

this might be a little better than the other one

Looking up through the hole in the bridge above us I see that there is no one left on the bridge.  The crane operator is gone as well.  There isn’t a boat in sight.  And the water goes on for what seems like forever – not a spot of visible land.

I start to think of ways to get back up the bridge, but there is no way short of climbing the concrete pillar, which is impossible.  I give up on planning and retract into isolation, just hoping that someone will come by and rescue us.  It’s a feeling of total hopelessness that I’ve only ever felt in a dream.  I suppose I could look upon that as a good thing.

dream #21

This is an short, old(er) dream from sometime in 2007.  I was dreaming in 3rd person, which had never happened before and had never happened since.

I am such a great artist.

I’m rollerskating ouside, near my house.  For some reason I drift over near my neighbor’s house and I end up rollerskating in a puddle in his grass.  I can hear the electricity clicking in the power lines that are directly above the puddle.  For a moment it passes through my mind that it might be dangerous to skate underneath such a low line, but I dismiss it.  The next thing I know I’m face down in the puddle, dead from electrocution.  Apparently the water had served as a conductor for some electricitly that had strayed from the lines.  The “camera” that is me viewing the dream pans out, and some somber script fades into the “screen”

Crista: 1990 – 2007.

When I woke up I facepalm’d.

But at least I know firsthand that the idea that if “you die in your dreams you die in real life” is a total myth.

dream #14

When I was a kid, I was always amazed with cartoons that had faceless characters.  Once, when I was about four years old, I was watching an episode of Muppet Babies where Nanny and the Muppets were going through an old photo album of hers.  The pictures, apparently taken by a blind photographer since her face was never in the shot, showed Nanny doing various odd jobs she had done over her life.  One particular photo was of Nanny working at a drive-in diner as a waitress on roller skates.  You could see all of her body, save for her head which was stuck inside a customer’s window.  I remember wishing there was a way to rewind and pause the TV so I could get really close to the screen to scrutinize the car’s rear window, thinking there may be a face behind it.

Much later, when I had moved from Muppet Babies to Powerpuff Girls, I constantly tried to catch a glimpse of Miss (Sara) Bellum, the “brains” of the Mayor’s operations (duh-dun-tss!).  It bothered me to no end that there were characters on the screen who the other characters could see but the audience could not.  I never really understood why show creators would purposely leave a character’s face missing, or, in the case of Charlie Brown, not even let the faceless (completely unseen, actually) character speak correctly!  I can only think of one reason:  because they want to drive the kids mad.  Shows that did this haunted my childhood, and the show that had the most impact was Cow and Chicken.

Cow and Chicken’s parents were two incredibly creepy pairs of legs.  We never got a glimpse of them above the waist.  The show’s artwork made me feel strangely uncomfortable when I would watch the show, and it was especially hard for me to watch when Mom and Dad were on screen.  It was nightmarish.  Literally.  Well, I dreamed about it, anyway.

I had this dream when I was in 4th grade and “liked” it so much that I incorporated it into a short story that we were supposed to be writing.  It didn’t fit into the story at all, but I thought it was creepy enough to be good story material.  Onto the dream:

I wake up in a house.  It is my house in the dream, but does not resemble my house in reality.  My room is completely dark, except for the moonlight shining through my open window.  It’s forebodingly cartoonish.  I hear a strange noise coming from downstairs.  I creep down the hall and glide half way down the stairs.  I crouch to look through the slats on the stair’s railing.  I can’t see anyone, but I can hear wrappers crinkling, like someone is going through the fridge.  Although I live with my parents and sister, something strongly tells me that it is not one of them.

I tiptoe down the rest of the stairs and hug myself against the outside of the kitchen wall.  I sidestep to the opening to the kitchen as if I’m walking on the ledge of a tall building.  I peek my head around the corner of the kitchen opening.  What I see makes my jaw drop.

It is Mom, from Cow and Chicken.  But I can see her whole body, face and all.  She has a fat, heart-shaped pasty white face, a pig-nose and short, curly blonde hair.  I am so stunned that I cannot move for a few moments.  Mom apparently feels my presence, because she looks away from the fridge and stares right into my eyes with a sad, scared look on her face.  My senses snap back to me, and I dart around the corner from which I came.  I listen for the crinkling again, hoping that maybe I imagined her seeing me, and that she would still be there when I looked back around the corner.  I hear nothing.

I took one small step into the kitchen.  The fridge was closed and Mom was gone.  I took a few more steps in to look around and see if she was hiding from me somewhere.  At first glance, it seems as though she has vanished into thin air.  I’m to leave the kitchen when I hear some whimpering.  I look on top of the fridge, and there’s Mom, scrunched between the top of the fridge and the bottom of a high cabinet.

I look up at her.  “Why are you crying?” I ask.

“You saw my face.” she says quietly.

“So?  To be honest, I always wanted to.  I never liked only being able to see your legs.”

“You saw my face!” she says, louder this time.

“I can still see your face!” I say.

“YOU SAW MY FACE, YOU SAW MY FACE, YOU SAW MY FAAAACE!” she begins shreiking.

“Shut up!  Shut up!” I yell back at her.

“YOOOOOOOOOU SAAAAAAAAAAAW MYYYYYY FAAAAAAAACE!”

It scared me so badly that I woke up.

A good 10 years later, long after I began to believe I was done with faceless characters, a new one showed up.

Anna Baldavitch on the Venture Bros.  She was only on two episodes (and can’t come back, since she died), but watching Careers in Science brings back some bad childhood memories.

dream #2

This is the first dream that I remember having. I was probably around 4 or 5 when it happened. It still haunts me.

I was at Eureeka’s Castle. We had just run through the whole theme song mumbo-jumbo – you know, “picnic time, picnic time, PICNIC TIME!”* (apparently this was an everyday occurrence at Eureeka’s place)- when all of a sudden, everyone disappeared. I wandered around, looking for anyone, but no one was there. I walked up some stairs that led to a long hallway with a large open space in the wall where a window might go, although there was no glass there.  I could see Magellan, the dragon, at the end of the hallway.  I ran to him, and instead of telling him that everyone else had disappeared, I said:

“You are my least favorite character on the show.”

This made him very angry, and he started to thrash with rage.  When I grabbed onto his tail for safety, he began to thrash his tail back and forth, slamming me against the walls and on the ground.

I woke up and cried.

*