Rant #2,112: Dream a Little Dream of Me

I have never been a person who had a lot of dreams while I slept, or at least remembered most of my dreams if I actually had any.

But as I am getting older, and with a lot of pressure around me, I seem to be remembering more of my dreams than ever before.

I had a very interesting one two nights ago, but first, let me digress.

When I was a kid, I did have one enduring dream, one that I had maybe once or twice a year over a period of a couple of years.

It was a dream of me falling. That is the only way that I can describe it. I don't know how long these dreams took place--a moment, a minute, an hour--but I had this dream as a kid several times during my pre-teen years.

One time, I remember that during this dream, I actually fell off my bed, and woke up on the floor next to my bed.

Another time--when I was maybe seven years old, because it could not have happened at any other time in my life due to size and weight, as you will see--my blanket was so tucked into the bed that I actually was falling onto the floor but was caught--or ensnared--by the blanket, which was fully tucked in at the side. It was so tucked in that it prevented me from hitting the floor, and I woke up cocoon-style in the side of the blanket.

Those dreams vanished by the time I was 10 years old or so, and I haven't had a similar dream since--or perhaps I have, and I simply don't remember it.

Then, as I became a teenager and later a young adult and then a full adult, I was one of those people who may have had dreams, but never remembered them. This literally went on for 40 or more years, but in the past few years, I have had dreams--some pretty vivid--that I definitely remember.

The most recent dream was a doozy, and it could have lasted for a few hours, a few minutes, or a few seconds.

But it was a vivid as all heck!

One period of my life that I never, ever dream about is high school. Those four years are a mere blip on my radar screen, four years that I would simply like to forget.

We had just moved from Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York--where I had those falling dreams--to the wilds of suburbia, in Massapequa Park, New York, and during those four years, I was at my most unhappiest.

I was away from my friends, away from the environment I knew, and away from pretty much everything that made me happy.

I didn't know anyone, nobody seemingly wanted to know me, and I suffered during those years, mentally, emotionally, socially and educationally.

Things really only picked up in my senior year there, and into college, where I had a ball and returned to all my prior levels that I had when we lived in Queens.

Anyway, last night, I had the very first dream that I could ever remember involving high school, more than 40 years after the fact.

I dreamt that somehow, this nearly 61 year old guy got transported back to 1975, the year that I graduated high school, with my knowledge of the past 40-plus years intact.

In other words, I was in 1975, in my 1975 body, but I had all the knowledge and experience that I possess today.

Somehow, this happened during a math class I had as a senior (did I even take math as a senior--I don't recall)--and I basically plopped into my seat right in the middle of class, sort of like the "Star Trek" crew beams down to a planet, through teleportation.

The class was looking at some printed mimeograph sheet that evidently had been handed out by the teacher--remember those?--and quite frankly, with all the knowledge I had about the future, I had no idea what I was looking at on that sheet in what was now the present, 1975!

A girl turned around and said something to me, and I had no idea what she was talking about.

The class bell then rung, and instinctively, I reached for my books under my chair, but there was nothing there. I folded up the mimeographed sheet, put it in my pocket, and left the classroom, walking in the hall and trying to figure out where my locker was, to no avail.

I figured I could go to the main office, get a copy of my schedule and find out where my locker was later, without letting on what had happened, but somehow, I ventured out onto the big main road in Massapequa, Sunrise Highway, and I looked around, and things were as they were in 1975.

Anybody that knows this main road, which stretches nearly from the Queens County/Nassau County border all the way out east on Long Island well in Eastern Suffolk County,  knows that the landscape of that roadway has changed dramatically over the past 43 years, but I was back in 1975, and I noticed all the changes that had not been made yet.

It was right then and there that I decided that I had to tell people what I knew was going to happen over the next 40-plus years--including the advent of the Internet, streaming, cell phones, DVDs, and yes, about Donald Trump--and I would do it at my class' Senior Variety Show.

Way back in 1975, I did participate in this show, as I ate donuts to set a short-lived record (I have spoken about this in the past on this blog).

But this time around, I was going to alter history; I would not be eating donuts, but I would act like a soothsayer, spiritualist or swami, telling people about what was going to happen in the future.

I decided on this plan of action because I was brimming with knowledge, and I just wanted to tell people about it.

The light went on in my bedroom, and with the light in my eyes, I woke up, and that was the end of the dream.

Yes, I have decided that this is all tied into my difficulties at finding a new job. I am so brimming with knowledge and enthusiasm, and I am so eager to show someone what I can do.

But just taking the dream as its own entity, that was some spectacular dream!

And for me to remember it all like I did ... would I have been able to convince kids in 1975 that 40 years later things would be so different in their world?

Sure, if the dream continued, I would probably have been booed off the stage, called some type of amateur Kreskin, and made to feel like a fool, but then again, maybe not.

Whatever the case, it was a great dream, one of the best dreams I ever had, or at least one of the best dreams I ever could remember.

Maybe it is also an omen, but a positive one.

Maybe, as they say, my ship is finally ready to come in.

Maybe not, but whatever the case, it was quite a dream, wasn't it?