I recently read a book titled, "Walking in on mum and dad: Adventures in embarrassment" by Brian King. Before I say anything else, let me tell you that I am one of the lucky kids NEVER to have walked in on ANYONE doing anything that would scar my psyche. However, during one of my nostalgic trips to the past, I did have a sudden realization (as follows).When I was little... let's say around three years old or so, I had nightmares. Because I have always wanted to try and make sense out of the world, I naturally assumed that nightmares were coming from OUTSIDE me. This is because there's no way that I would have inflicted them on myself. So, they had to be like evil ghosts that floated around the world, swimming in the ocean of night-time... along with other types of sleep-ghosts, like good dreams, neutral dreams, strange dreams, pee-pee dreams... you get the idea.
So, a sleeping brain, like a baited hook, drifts into the nightly ocean realm to bob about until it "catches" one of these dream-ghosts. Sometimes you catch a good one, sometimes not. My goal at night was to figure out how to keep from catching the wrong type of dream. At first, I thought it was just a random catch. But over time, because I seemed to be having so many bad dreams, I started to think they were out to get me. Yes. I knew that the evil dream-ghosts were hunting me.
One night, while I pondered this problem, I decided to picture what it must be like for these evil-hunter-dream-ghosts in their dark sleep-realm. My tiny brain was not really up to the task of logical thinking, but fortunately for me, it was also too young to know how bad it was at thinking. So here are some of my "deductions" that guided me to a solution (some relevant to that deduction, some not):
- Because it is ONLY POSSIBLE for ghost-dreams to attack AT NIGHT, I figured they couldn't see very well. Hey, who CAN see well in the dark, right?! (Totally missing the point that night was when I slept...)
- Because the bad dreams really never bothered me until recently, I figured that the first bad-dream ghost must have found me by accident and because my juicy young veal-brain was so delicious, it alerted its sibling bad-dream ghosts to let them know how to find me. Sort-of like the honey-bee dance... but for evil bad-dream ghosts.
- I never had the same bad dream twice, so when my brain "ate" the bad-dream, it must make one less bad dream out there for someone else to have.
- Once a dream is dreamt, it doesn't leave my brain to swim around in the dream ocean. I know this because I can still remember the dream... so it's still inside my head, only not as scary since it's gotta live with me now.
- If the bad-dream ghosts cannot see very well, and it's only a one-way trip into my head, they must know only one path to get to me.
- There must be a way that the bad dreams get into my head from the outside. So this is got to be a path that is always open. Obviously, then, it has to be my nose. Think about it. My eyes are closed, so no dreams can get in that way. I can sleep with my mouth in the pillow or on my arm. My ears are easy to cover because one is usually in the pillow, while the other is covered with a blanket. (To this day, I can't sleep without even a light sheet covering my ear.) The only entry is my nose because I keep it out of the covers like a snorkel.
- I sleep on my right side for the most part. This means that the ghost dreams found a specific way into my head. This way MUST be from my left, since that's the direction my nostrils open up to.. AHA! I was like Sherlock Holmes figuring these suckers out! I was about to beat them completely!
- Because I am not asleep right away when I get to bed, the dreams must have to time their arrival just right. The world is big, so they probably have to start swimming toward my nose early in the day to get to my nose when it is open to them (i.e., when I am sleeping).
- SOLUTION: Start my sleep as usual, on my right ear. But, just at the last minute, flip over and face the other way! HAH! Epic Evil Dream-Ghost Attack FAIL! Now they can't find a way in because all they will do is bonk against the back of my head! Hahahahahahahahah!
- FATAL FLAW: Just because it's a one-way street to my brain, that doesn't mean they can't go in the exact opposite direction. Yes, it occurred to me that maybe they could just turn around and go in a straight line the other way - around the Earth - to get in the other way! Not to worry! Because the Earth is so big, I knew it would take them MORE time to go around the other way than I would be asleep. Besides, half-way through the night, I could just turn over and look back the other way. They wouldn't know this, and if there were any speedy evil ghost-dream swimmers, they'd just end up hitting the back of my head again!
A few years ago I was pondering those early days of crisp logical feats of deduction and wondered about what it must have been to set me off on these nightmares. I think I figured it out! It was a four-stage sequence of revelations that made me wish I hadn't been so nostalgic that day.
- In this stage, I recalled that when I went to bed, I would like to stare up at the window in my bedroom because either the moonlight (streetlight?) usually brought in a good amount of light. My bedroom window also faced out to a street that wasn't used much at night (Kingsbury Avenue). But occasionally, a car would drive by and I could hear its engine as well as its tires on the road as it passed by.
- Recalling that, it suddenly popped into my head that the road my window faced was a hill that dropped down into a dark scary wooded area. It was scary especially because we hardly ever drove that way. It was leading away from everything we would need (stores, school, relatives, etc.). And when I was a kid, that was enough information for me to know that if a witch or a unicorn or a dragon, or whatever were to pass by, it would have to come from THAT direction.
- The previous revelation reminded me about the gypsy wagon that used to pass by my house at night! It was probably right after watching the movie Pinocchio that I started to imagine gypsies traveling the streets at night with their wagons of possessions hunting mis-behaving little boys (remember when Pinocchio gets captured in the wagon?). That, plus my grandmother's occasional threats of what would happen if I didn't behave ("If you don't behave, I'm going to sell you back to the gypsies!" - nice huh?).
- My final train of thinking brought me to wonder what the hell could it have been that would work its way slowly up the road at night sounding like a gypsy wagon with bouncing tins and clomping hoof-stomps, and squeaking springs, and... well right about here, I also recalled that my parents' bedroom was right next to mine. It is easy to understand how a kid with his ears under the covers could mistake the origins of these sounds.
There is no blowtorch powerful enough to burn the memory of gypsy wagons from my mind now. What was once, up until a few short years ago, a pleasant childhood reminiscence of a silly fear... has taught me that those damn evil dream-ghosts CAN get you when you are awake!
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