The One with the Tornado and Plane

Background:  I had this dream exactly a week after the tornado that went by work, after talking about it with friends and after driving home in a crazy lighting storm.  There was another really LOUD storm the night I had the dream but I'm not sure if the dream was before, after, or during that storm.  I believe it was before.

 

I had a dream that a tornado was heading toward me - I was outside but don't recall the exact location.  I know other people were around.  We were looking up into the funnel cloud and saw the tail of an airplane that had been caught into the tornado and it was swinging around from the right to left.  It was moving pretty slowly (assuming because the plane was HUGE). 

 

It started coming down toward me and I knew it was going to fall on me, but it was not falling quickly.  So, I watched the plane as it came down and I positioned myself so I wouldn't get smooshed.  I ended up crouching down between the fuselage and the wing - kind of the left armpit of the plane. 

 

Once the tornado passed, we looked at the plane and noticed that although the doors were shut and the windows were not broken, there was no one inside and we assumed that they had someone gotten sucked out while up in the air.

The One with the Tobiko In My Nose

I was talking with someone from work and they commented that my nostrils looked strange - they were closed like if you pinch your nose shut.  I thought it was weird that I didn't notice a change in my breathing and looked in a mirror.

My nose did feel a bit clogged, so I stuck my finger in one nostril and felt something, so I kind scooped and some tobiko came out.

I was very concerned in the dream and went to a doctor and they said that I had a disease.  That's all I remember.

The One with the Dream Within a Dream

I had a dream within a dream this morning, and what was strange was that the second dream was more normal than the first.  In the first, the only thing I really remember was being in a parking lot outside, and a group of kids with a couple of adults doing some activity with dolls and all of a sudden they took all the clothes off the dolls, but the dolls had realistic breasts and that was really funny in the dream.

At that point, I remembered I had a dream and started writing about it.  In the second dream, my friends Meredith and Greg were in California stuck on highway 1 (which they are in real life, and were in "real life" in the 1st level dream).  While they were stuck in the 2nd level dream, they went to some restaurant and were taking a ton of photos and videos of them doing funny things.

There were about 7 people and they had 4 people in a booth and 3 in a small table and they kept moving the small table around - close to the booth, further, and taking all kinds of pictures of them laughing.

Then they were trying to catch bubbles in their mouths in the parking lot and there was one video where the bubble popped and got soap into a girl's mouth and she gagged (well more like dry heaved) and it was the most hilarious thing to watch in the 1st level dream.

Dream Themes: Loose/Missing Teeth

I had a friend ask me about dreams where your teeth are loose or falling out and I knew that I had several dreams with this theme, and have even heard references to it on shows like 30 Rock.  So, let's look that one up:

"Lose a tooth and you are afraid of losing a loved one.  Lose all of them and you are full of anxieties about the future." (1)

"Dreaming of teeth falling out may represent insecurity. These dreams often occur at a time of transition... When you lost your milk teeth, you also gradually lost your childhood innocence. Losing your teeth today therefore shows that today you have similar feelings of uncertainty and self-consciousness as you did in childhood. The dream could also highlight your worries about getting older or your sexual attractiveness." (2)

"Im Tofeeq, a Palestinian woman, told me that among the Arabs it is believed that if you dream of losing teeth it means your brother or son is in trouble. She had a dream in which three of her teeth fell out. The next day she received a call from America to say her son had been shot in the head three times by a gunman." (3)

In my own experience, I always had a sense of fear during these dreams that I would be ugly, so I'm guessing in my case it's insecurity about how I look.  My other insecurities tend to play out in my dreams in other ways, I guess, like being chased or being in perilous situations.

(1) Grant, Russell. The Illustrated Dream Dictionary.

(2) Hamilton-Parker, Craig. Remembering & Understanding Your Dreams.

(3) Crisp, Tony. Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your Unconscious Mind

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.