And Then All My Dreams Came True

I never talked, or even thought, much about dreams until middle school. I've always had pretty vivid nightmares, but nice or interesting dreams, no. I could remember very well the murderous evil reflected in the eyes of the skeletons that burst from the glowing green hell of my closet, but happy thoughts just seemed to dissipate in a faintly cheerful puff in the morning. If I did remember a dream that wasn't a nightmare, it was unbelievably boring, like a re-run of the particularly dull parts of my day. This was not the case for my new school's friends, who frequently had creative, fascinating dream worlds in which magical adventures with talking animals occurred, or hilarious, incongruous happenstances with schoolmates took place. They could spend entire recesses discussing their dreams, while I said little and thought resentfully about my dream closet of horrors.

In high school, we learned about lucid dreams, in which you could harness your brain to have whatever type of dream you wanted when you became aware that you were dreaming.

I. Was. Thrilled.

No more beloved family members turning to me in the car before turning into carnivorous monsters and devouring me! No more creepy strangers breaking into my bedroom at night and almost stabbing me! My nighttime horrors were over, now that I realized I could trick my brain into not being a terrifying fount of hellish imagination!

I tried for weeks to have a lucid dream, before I mostly gave up. I didn't have many nightmares any more, only the dull ones, so it wasn't really that big of a deal. And then one night. I was dreaming about walking to class at school, trying to remember the date, when I realized that the date was during fall break. So I couldn't really be at school. I MUST BE DREAMING, OMG.

What should I do what should I do what should I do? I could do anything! I could fly off into the air! I could conjure a unicorn from thin air and ride it all the way home where I would dig up buried treasure in the yard and build a castle of rainbows and laughter! I could remember all the rules of algebra and not forget them five minutes after I learned them! I was paralyzed in the courtyard with joy and indecision.

It was then that I remembered vaguely wishing I could play an instrument well. NOW I COULD, BY GOD, MY WISHES COULD BE GRANTED. So I immediately started a bluegrass band in my school chaplain's office with me on banjo, some guy I had a crush on for like, two months on guitar, and a random girl on violin. We were intense, probably the best bluegrass band that school had EVER SEEN. After we played a few songs, I drove home in my car to watch TV and take the rest of my dream day off.

Because ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE.