Classic Rant #1,276 (August 24, 2014): Dreams and Nightmares

We all have dreams and nightmares, and me, personally, I usually don't remember them at all.

However, this weekend, I am convinced that the power of Dairy Queen overtook my mind and set me on the course to have a couple of memorable/notorious dreams/nightmares.

Let me explain.

On Saturday, it was my son's birthday, so among the festivities that we arranged was that we would have birthday cake after we ate dinner out in late afternoon.

We ate out, came home, and about an hour later, we had cake.

But not just any cake, we had Dairy Queen ice cream birthday cake.

And it was very good.

We chose their sort of "cupcake" arrangement, where they have about a dozen cupcake-like ice creams all set together. It looked really good, and it kind of portions out the ice cream better than a cake can.

Anyway, we ate the ice cream, and hours later, went to bed.

I then went on to have a couple of the most vivid nightmares I have had a in a long time.

I had several that night, waking me up about every hour on the hour. But the two I remember were pretty lucid.

The first one that I remember is that I was at my son's now old high school. He was with a friend, and we were together. I told him that I had to do something (I don't remember what it was), and that I would be right back, and that he and his friend should stay right where they were.

Of course, being that this was a nightmare, you know what happened.

They were gone. I looked all over for them, but they vanished.

I woke up around the time I exhausted places to look for them.

Then I had the next nightmare, which was that I took my car to the local gas station to fill up my tank.

I got out of the car, went in to pay, and came out, and the car was gone.

I looked everywhere, but I could not find the car. Heck, I even looked under cars to find it.

I woke up when, again, I exhausted every possibility.

OK, that was Saturday night going into Sunday, but it continued last night.

Yes, we had more Dairy Queen birthday cake last night, and yes, a while after eating it, I fell asleep.

Again, I had a few dreams last night, but just remember this one.

I returned back to high school as a 57 year old. I didn't need to be there. But it wasn't just returning to my old high school, it was going to the high school I should have gone to before we moved from Queens to Long Island all those years ago.

Springfield Gardens High School was the high school I was supposed to go to, and in reality, the school doesn't even exist anymore.

But in my dream world, it most certainly did exist, and it was quite different than it ever really was.

In 2014, it was pretty much gentrified, as in my dream, my old neighborhood had, out of the blue, become a very hip place to live for people of all colors and backgrounds.

So SGHS was a mixed school in my dream, and for whatever reason, I went back to high school, but back to a high school that I never actually attended.

It came with all the first-day jitters about finding your room, meeting the teacher, seeing who was in your class, all of that, and I actually met another Larry there.

I took some type of film class elective, and I woke up as we were watching some type of presentation, of which I really don't remember.

That one wasn't a nightmare, but it was scary nonetheless.

Why would I want to return to high school? Yuck, that is the last time in my life that I would want to return to!

Anyway, I got up, kind of got back my bearings after a few minutes, and then went back to sleep.

I am sure somebody well versed in dreams and nightmares would be able to make heads and tails of what I dreamed, but whatever it means, it was pretty chilling.

I have to blame it on eating Dairy Queen so late in the day. We never have Dairy Queen in the house, only on special occasions like we had this weekend.

Why would I dream like that--it had to be the Dairy Queen.

I think we have a little left, but I won't be eating it this time around.

No, I have had enough of weird dreams and nightmares the last two nights.

Tonight, it is dinner and I am done!