The One With the Movie About Violent Sleep Disorders

I was in a large department store in the men's department looking at some sandals that were just basically regular black shoes with lots of the leather cut out to make them strappy - there were lots of straps.

I was trying to find a pair that was 1/2 a size smaller than the ones I tried on but I was surprised that the size 31's fit me as well as they did - they ran small obviously because I normally wore a 29 or so.

Being in a department store in a normal situation turned into it being night, after closing, and instead of being the retail sales floor, it was the warehouse or storage area of the store.

It was after closing, but there were a number of people in there looking around.  I remember a girl and a blond guy in addition to me.  I think the girl either had a bike or was looking for one.

I had a weird role in the dream.  The idea of the dream was that it was actually a movie.  I was kind of at the same time just a 3rd party observer and one of the main characters, it seemed.

The premise of the movie was some people that had sleep disorders so when something in life bothered them (say, being touched by other people), they would react in their sleep (like sleepwalking).

One guy with dark hair (I couldn't really tell if he was me or not) didn't like to be touched and would kick people in the head (I think he explained it that he would kick you in the eye) in his sleep.

But, I also remember "being" a different person (feeling like what it was to be inside them, kind of) and his reaction was just less-specific violence.  I remember the feeling picking someone up by the neck and holding them against a wall.

There were two other guys looking for shoes (sneakers) but they were moving stuff around.  They put stuff really high up on a fixture in the middle of the floor, and I remember while looking around some of the shoe boxes fell on me.

These two guys were up to no good, unlike the rest of us who were just looking around.  Once the boxes fell, the bad guys got agitated and wanted our contact information.  We questioned that and the blond kid explained that they wanted our e-mail addresses, etc. so they could place us in the warehouse to prevent us from snitching on them.

While the bad guys were agitated, they were pushing us around and grabbing our arms and stuff and at least one of us warned them not to touch us because of the disorders.

Next thing I remember was being "inside" another guy - a black guy - who was walking home.  I think he was in the warehouse (good guy - one of a total of 4 good people in the warehouse who were the main characters in the movie with sleep disorders) but don't remember seeing him beforehand.  He walked by this hooker who was lying on the sidewalk and people were pouring gas on her and set her on fire.  She was strung out on heroine so she didn't know what was going on.

They tried to lay another hooker (not as strung out) next to her and do the same and they snuggled up to each other, as if to protect each other from sleeping on the sidewalk.  They were both on fire, but it took a while for the first hooker to exhibit some distress - she was waving her arms around and the second wrapped her in a the foil lined blanket they were lying on.

The first hooker died, but the second was fine (even though she was exposed to the flames), so one of the bad people (I think it was a short woman that reminded me to Snookie) stabbed her in the stomach with a really big kitchen knife - shaped like chef's knife but much wider.

It seems as those the bad guys in the warehouse were in a gang or something and were killing people to establish a serial killer or something - maybe as something to implicate us in?  I think they wanted to find six people to kill.

The dude I was inside kept walking toward home, up a hill, when some guy jumped him from behind, pulled his hoodie over his head and tried to tie the strings.  I remember thinking this was a normal risk in his neighborhood - to get mugged this way.  The guy/me ended up throwing the guy over his shoulder, Judo style, kind of down the hill.

The guy left because there was a cop car whose dash camera was filming the whole thing.  The car belonged to the guy's uncle or dad, who he lived with.

He got to the porch where his aunt or mom was with his dad, and they were like "What the hell's going on?"  In his head he knew these bad people were trying to get something or had something on him.

Dream Symbols: Guns

I've had several dreams involving guns.

One of the theories out there is that the gun represents a penis or male sexuality. More generally, it can represent fears or anxieties - threats in general.

Weapons in general can represent conflict, anger or resentment in life.  It's interesting all the weapons that have shown up in my dreams are phallic in nature, though:  wooden stakes, guns, knives.  I wonder if women have dreams of different kinds of weapons.

Many of my dreams involve me being shot at, or other people being shot or shot at.  According to my dream books, this can represent fear of being hurt or being threatened.

I don't recall ever having shot a person in my dreams - most often both the shooter and the person being shot / shot at are not me.  I'm not really sure what it means that I'm removed from the action.

[Update:  I polled some people to find out what weapons have shown up in their dreams.  I'll keep adding as I hear more:]

• babies in canons [male dreamer, used against others]
• giant chopsticks [male dreamer, used against others]
• used iPhones [male dreamer, used against dreamer (thrown)]

The One with the Ice Dancing, Graduation, and Hostage Convent

The first thing I remember is dancing with a guy ballroom-style.  He was tall and I think someone I was dating.  I was leading and we were dancing waltz (and it seemed to fit) but then I realized the song was in 4/4 so I tried dancing the rhumba twice as fast.

There were a bunch of guys there dancing around too, I think Keith from work was there too.  At one point we decided we were ice dancing (but not on ice - we were outside at a park plaza or on a wide sidewalk or near a fountain or something like that and it was nighttime).  So we were kind of sliding around and trying spinning jumps once in a while.

Then the guy went and got a bunch of mortar boards (graduation hats) that were different colors for different designations:  I was getting black because I was going to be a consultant, he was getting blue because he was getting his doctorate (and in the dream that meant he was going on to continue to get his PhD) and red was for master's degrees.

Then things changed over to a bunch of my friends graduating.  The guys were gone and everyone seemed to be hispanic female friends of mine, none of which seemed to be people I recognize as friends in real life.  Although graduation wasn't that day, we were taking all kinds of pictures of them in their mortar boards.  When we were talking about when graduation actually was, we were speaking both English and Spanish.

For one of the photos, the girls getting master's degrees were standing behind a Christmas tree and to all get behind it (since there were 7 or 8) some had to stand on something.  I was trying to take pictures, but there were a bunch of other people trying to take pictures with a bunch of cameras, so it was hard to get them all to look at one camera.  But then I realized you couldn't see any of them through the tree, anyway.  What kind of seemed like their eyes showing through were just the Christmas lights.

Things kind of broke up from there and people started wandering around.  There was a big building that was both inside and outside - like a building with walls but no roof - maybe like a plaza in Spain.  Some of the girls went into that building and I followed.  Inside there were a bunch of shady looking guys walking around.  They looked like they were in a gang or something.

In the corner, four of the girls were in what looked like a photo book with a short curtain so you could see their legs.  Two were jammed together facing the back, and it appeared two more were sitting on the other two's shoulders.  I thought that was funny, so I took a picture of them getting the picture taken in the booth.

I took a couple more photos in the building before wandering out.  A guy ran over to me waving wildly telling me to get out of there.  He said that a bunch of guys broke into the building, tripped the alarm and police were on their way.

I realized that the building was actually a Diesel store, the girls were in a dressing room and they were probably going to get into trouble for being in there, although they wandered in there by mistake just like I did.  I also realized that I got a photo of two of the gang members while taking pictures inside, so I turned on my video function and started to try discretely filming to capture as many of the gang members as possible when they start to leave when the police arrive.

I started going back to the building, which at this point seemed to be bigger, have a roof and have a big black iron fence around it.  All these nuns in different outfits started pouring out, in a hurry, some praying, some yelling "Save us!  Save us!".  There were different groups that had different colored habits.  There seemed to be non-nuns with them, too.

One of the regular people was Mary from work and she was sitting down just outside the fence talking about her ordeal of being held against her will.  She was talking with Lisa (who was not held inside but had run over) about how they were all praying, and it seemed as though the room was spinning.

I ran over and said to Lisa, "You know Mary too?!  How??"  She said she did and I joked that it was because she was a whore (meaning the social butterfly kind, not an actual whore).

Then my alarm went off.

The One With the Grim Reaper

One of my horror movie dreams.  There was a town and this serial killer / mass murderer was hanging out there killing people off.

A kid said to me in the dream that the killer was there just to make headlines but he had a feeling he would end up killing off about a third of the town’s population.  I remember going to some dinner when I knew he would be coming and killing people but I hid in some little room that kind of was like a confessional.  I also remember him appearing on top of some big structure dressed like the grim reaper and killing some kid with the scythe.

The One with Embossing

I had a meeting just outside of the office of the president where I work - like the waiting area for his office. We were troubleshooting some problem and I was working on a laptop. Once we were done with the meeting, I was looking around the room and found this round, metal disc with some kind of writing engraved on it. I couldn't tell what the writing was, so for some reason, I pressed it into the back of my hand so it became kind of embossed in my skin like a notary's stamp.

Because of that stamp, I think either the president or someone else saw it but I ended up getting promoted because of the stamp. It was like that was the way they marked people as special.

I was in another meeting, this time I think with an executive and some other people and ended up getting stamped by another executive but this time on my forearm.

The next thing I remember was being with some other people who got stamped - I think in a van - and we were talking about how we had our pay statements intercepted by a guy I work with but he just made sure they we got our raises - because of the stamps we got big increases in salary.

I also remember the executive who stamped me telling me to stamp a woman I work with. I found someone with that name and stamped her but she was very old - like too old to promote, and I realized I stamped the wrong wrong. So I had to find the right one. I think that part too place in a big mansion instead of a workplace.

At one point the others that got promoted and I were near some area of the company - like a back gate, and we were trying to get somewhere but you couldn't get there from where we were because the entrance was too congested... at least that was what we said. I just remember a tunnel-like entrance outside the gate leading underground at an angle.

The One with the Big Layoff

I was in my cubicle at work and everyone was looking out the windows.  There was a bunch of people outside and I think they laid off a whole division or sub and we were watching them leave all at once, kind of like a fire drill.

I went back to my cubicle and three of us were sitting in my cube with Mike (who didn't say a word), eating breakfast.  I was trying to tell Jeff about a dream I had with him in it, but there were two ladies who looked like lesbians who kept trying to listen.

I told them I couldn't tell the dream with them there but they didn't leave, and finally I said 'SHOO!'  And one said, "Was it a dream that they came and found porn on your work computer because you're so adorable?"  I said, "Yeah that's it!  Shoo!!"

I was eating something that I can't remember, Sarah was eating red jello and Jeff had creamy rice with peaches.  Sarah tried some of the rice and peaches but mixed it with her jello and was like, urm....  I thought about trying it but I asked Jeff if he was sick and he said yes.

Then I woke up.