To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Edgar Allan Poe is credited with saying, “Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.” Poe is one of my favorite authors and I think Eddy is on to something here. Wouldn’t it be cool if we didn’t have to sleep? I think of all the things I could do if I didn’t have to waste six to eight hours a night with my mind wandering about exploring dreams. But then again, my dreams are pretty interesting on the rare occasion I remember them. Makes you wonder what the ones I can’t remember are like, doesn’t it?

Let me tell you about this one dream I had not too long ago. It was a day like any other day in my life with the sun rising in the south over a sea of pomegranate Jell-O. The purple otters and the aquamarine aquatic armadillos were playing together in the surf caused by the spinning triple mothball-smelling moons high above. Looking down the lovely lime green and burnt orange beach, I saw my auto insurance agent coming up to me and telling me he was here to give me a rebate check since they were lowering the rates on the Weinermobile I drove. Like that could happen. Sometime dreams are just too farfetched and you wake up in a cold sweat thinking about rebate checks that will never come.

Then there was the dream where I was so embarrassed that I showed up to school fully dressed on naked day. And then I forgot when I got to swim team practice and actually wore my speedo instead of the skinny dipping we were supposed to be doing that day. How they laughed at me in school that day for being over-dressed. Or that may have just been a different kind of dream since I don’t remember any of the guys from high school being in that one.

Then there was the dream that I had insomnia. No matter how hard I tried in my dream I couldn’t get any sleep. Do you have any idea what is it like to be dreaming that you can’t fall asleep? It’s horrible. I’d rather have the dream I was being poked in the stomach by the Dalmatian that was jumping up trying to get me while I floated over its yard. I woke up exhausted from both of those dreams and went back to bed.

Okay. Enough about dreams. Next time we will talk about nightmares and how you too can control the snakes, spiders and hamsters that torture all of us as we slumber.