The West Virginia Surf Report!

Nobody Cares About the Weird Dream You Had Last Night, But…

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One of the original Surf Report rules of thumb:  Nobody cares about the weird dream you had last night.  But I want to tell you what I’ve been doing for the past six or seven hours…

I was living in a rickety apartment building somewhere, on the top floor.  Every time I set foot in the place, it felt like the room tilted slightly.  On the roof was a hot tub, but it was half-full of nasty-ass water and filth.  It was built on some sort of lazy Susan situation, so the whole tub could rotate.  But the floor was crumbling, and I was terrified that I might fall through.

All around the rotating hot tub was mounds of trash, beer cans and empty potato chips bags, which I blamed on the previous tenants.  I rarely went up there, because it was far too dangerous.

I came home from work one day (I guess), and called for Andy.  But he didn’t come to me.  “Andy!” I hollered again.  The floor tilted a little, due to the force of my raised voice, but the dog did not appear.  What the?  Where he at??

I was then launched into a many-hours (it seemed) odyssey of walking the streets, looking for my AWOL companion.  And all around my weird apartment building was a sea of basketball courts, filled with roughneck black guys, and scary meth-freak white trash.  All were taunting me relentlessly, for no known reason.  There was an abundance of gold jewelry and cruel laughter.

I walked the streets of this unknown city — industrial and Soviet in nature — for hours and hours.  Nobody was friendly to me, and I felt unsafe at all times.  There was a river at one point, and it was brown, swift-moving, and menacing.  There was shit in the water, substantial things like trash dumpsters and Chevettes.

Eventually I went back to my unstable apartment building and decided to check the roof.  Maybe Andy got up there somehow?  When I stepped on the floor, it felt like balsa wood.  And the hot tub was spinning at a high rate of speed, creating a breeze that sent some of the garbage flying over the edge.  I could hear the basketball court people yelling in protest, down below.

No sign of the dog, though.  So I returned to the apartment, where some dude was now sacked out on the floor, using a yellow backpack as a pillow.  I think he was a guy from my current job, but it was a bit ambiguous.  I woke him up, and asked if he’d seen Andy.  He said, “Who’s Andy?”

I began walking through the crumbling apartment calling my dog’s name, and he came sprinting up a staircase, from god knows where.  But he was skinny and tiny, almost like a ferret — a ferret with border collie markings, and Andy’s full-sized head.

The guy who’d been sleeping in the next room said he had to be going, and he and his backpack left the apartment.  As he exited, the whole place tilted slightly, and I thought it might go over.  But everything quickly stabilized.  I could hear the rumbling of the spinning hot tub up above, and the crinkling of the chip bags flying around.

Then the real Andy started barking downstairs, and I woke up.  Thankful to be delivered from that freaky-ass world…

What in the hand-rolled hell?  Any idea what any of that means?  I’d be much obliged if you could do a bit of amateur analyzing.  Use the comments link below.

And we’ll lift the ban on talking about weird dreams for one day, as well.  Have you had dreams that have stuck with you through the years?  I dreamed that my parents were killed in a nightclub(?!) fire when I was a kid, and it was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever encountered.  It still creeps me out, forty years later.

So, there ya go.  Have at it, boys and girls.

I’ll be back on Friday.

Now playing in the bunker

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Comments

  2. I had some fairly interesting dream one morning last week that I kept going on and on, even during the five 6 minutes snoozes–beep, beep, hit button, back to dream where I left off. I remember thinking during the last snooze (the one that ends at 6:03 just before I drag my fat ass out of the bed) that I wanted to think about the really nifty dream after I was up. By the time I walked to the bathroom from my bed–all of 12 feet–the dream was completely gone. Up in smoke and not an inkling of anything it was about. Quite disconcerting.

  3. I had the “How to Trap Cats” on my office Bulletin Board for years and could not remember where it came from, now I know.

    Thanks, Jeff. Another mystery solved.

  4. My dreams are always jacked up and some of them stay with me for days. But, dude, wtf did you eat before bed last night?

  5. mine seem to be worse if I eat before bed. must be my fat cells working overtime or something. 🙂 the creepy tilting world with goofy background noises has me afraid to go to sleep. 🙂

  6. Dream analysis: You drank too many beers last night… or maybe you didn’t drink enough beers last night. Correct accordingly.

    Seriously though, sounds like you’re stressed about a situation with your house… maybe the mortgage payments are getting tough… or it’s slowly falling apart on you and you’re expecting an expensive repair? I dunno. But then, this analysis probably counts as “projection”, since that’s actually how I feel about my condo. So you can probably ignore me.

  7. When I was about 15, I had a transatlantic jetlag-induced, multi-colored dream about judgment day. The face of god was looking down on earth from the clouds, and he was pissed.

    Closer to earth, Jesus stood at a gold podium that had stairs to go up to him on both sides. People in colored robes were stepping up to meet Jesus, whereupon he would touch their shoulders and off they would float towards god in the sky.

    I can still see this dream clearly although I have never had it again in 35 years. And the very real fear I had of how angry god was comes back every time I think of that dream.

    And I’m not a religious person by any means, especially when I was 15. Spooky.

  8. I ALWAYS have weird dreams for whatever reason I do not know. I’m always running from someone or fending off some kind of murderer…I think I just play too many video games before bed.

    I always have a reoccuring dream about a creepy hotel in I guess, England somewhere…just an old English style hotel that I would never stay at. When you first walk into the hotel it’s very modern and comfortably decorated, but then you get into the room and it’s just a typical Motel 6 room. Except a hallway always appears with 3 doors. Two are bedrooms, and the third is simply a glass door with a perfect view of the lobby which has now become a historical museum full of mummies and tombs, which also didn’t leave us with much privacy. I just recently had this dream again that this was the hotel we were staying in for our Florida trip and I was pissed.

  9. I agree, stress.

    When I was building carwashes I would dream about work all the time. When I start dreaming about work I know it’s time to get the fuck out. Plus that job was going to kill me or my co-worker, between the electricutions, gas explosions, ripped pants, sprained limbs, falls, freezing cold, and the occaisional catapult into the ceiling….

    And one of my favorite quotes from the first season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

    Dee Reynolds: I had the craziest dream last night that I was in Cleveland, Ohio – which is really weird because I’ve never been to Ohio. And this guy was wearing a bunny suit, and he was coming out of…

    Dennis Reynolds: [interrupting her] You know what Dee, I don’t want to hear about your dream, okay? I hate listening to people’s dreams. It’s like flipping through a stack of photographs. If I’m not in any of them, and nobody’s having sex, I just… don’t care.

  10. Way too many dreams to name one but I used to have one about being in bed and looking up and seeing large furry spiders crawling on the walls and ceiling. can’t stand spiders to this day.
    Also used to dream about owls then read somewhere that it is common for people that think they have been abducted by aliens to dream about them.
    Now I dream to the point it’s hard to tell dreams from reality, if there was a pill that would stop dreaming I would be on it!
    I live another life in my sleep…. have woke up crying, screaming, laughing or sexually aroused.

  11. Yea, it could be some manner of food…”an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato”. Or something like that.

    Remember what happened to Gomer Pyle after a Welsh Rarebit binge?

  12. Two mornings ago, I dreamt that there was a long line of cars snowed in on the interstate, and a bunch of cows with shovels came along and dug them out.

  13. I think Jimbo’s on the right track with the interpretation as the conditions in your dream mirrored what you expressed a couple of days ago.

    The state of my dreaming house tends to reflect my spiritual or psychological state of mind at the time of the dream: neat and clean=life is good; disrepair and filth=I need to work on something.

  14. I remembered I had a dream one time when I was little about a really beautiful country house with a barrel of flowers in the corner of the yard. I remembered it in very fine detail. A few years later, the family and I were on a trip to Wisconsin and I suddenly had a extreme wave of deva ju as we passed the very same house, right up to the barrel of flowers in the corner of the yard. I about shit my pants and my parents insisted I’d probably seen it before, but I know I didn’t, I’d only been to Wisconsin once before. That image never left me. Has that ever happened to anyone?

  15. Everyone in my family (and I’m one of 6 kids) has had a dream in which I get beheaded. One of my sister’s had a recurring nightmare where 2 guys would comein, take my head and leave the rest of my body in the highchair. Imagine that shit going through a toddler’s head?

    I always have crazy dreams. Very vivid, detail oriented dreams. Sometimes scary, sometimes very cool.

  16. I used to work in a therapists office who told me that the best way to analyze a dream is to ask yourself “how did it make me feel?”

    If I were to play amateur analyst, I’d say it sounds like a pretty typical anxiety dream. Your world is tilted and off kilter. You keep trying to bring it back to even. A new person (from work) is in your space and you don’t know why (new boss). Your loved one (dog) is absent and when you find him, he is a different creature (absence from family/too much work guilt)?

    I dream of the time. My worst was when I was a pre- teenager and I watched a man smash an infant face-first into a piano keyboard. Analyze THAT one for me!

  17. At least you weren’t running through a tunnel eating a banana…..perhaps you actually spent the night in Wilkes-Barre

  18. i usually have hilarious dreams which make me wake up laughing. in fact, sometimes i can’t wait to get to bed for the comedy to begin. one example i can think of was a short fairly bizarre dream about morey amsterdam and a dust buster. the pittsburgh post gazette was doing a piece on dreams and asked my permission to print it. i agreed. my only claim to fame.

    • Oh Dorothy – please post it! I love dreams that make me wake up laughing. I don’t have them often, but it’s a great way to wake up!

        • ok! for all my fans:
          i was in a nightclub lit with blue lights. there were three round, stand alone stages with various acts going on, ala ringling bros. i walked over to the coat check desk where my husband’s office manager was demonstrating what looked like a dustbuster for a crowd of people. she explained that it was an advanced medical device which cured disease and repaired damaged body tissues. my husband had invented it (which was laugh number one, as dr. wonderful can’t replace lightbulbs) just about this time there was a commotion at one of the stages where morey amsterdam had been playing the piano (no he didn’t have his cello) he was lying flat on his back and looked like hell. the club manager told me to grab my husband’s invention and hurry up, as “morey has just had a heart attack and all they’re doing for him is spraying him with WD-40.” sure enough, there were a bunch of guys with spray cans. dream ends here..
          i think this appeared in the PG about 7 or 8 yrs ago. i responded to a request for weird dreams, and was told that this was one of the weirdest they received. hee hee. i very often wake up laughing and then can’t remember what was so funny, but the other day i yelled, “MOTHERFUCKER!!!” woke myself up and have no idea what it was all about.

          • Dorothy…

            Thanks for sharing. It’s really Morey Amsterdam that puts the dream over the top. Mr. Amsterdam is one of those who connects vaudeville with television (Groucho is another) to help preserve what’s left of our national sense of humor. Thanks for keeping him alive in your dreams.

            I’m also interested in the dream from which you woke up yelling. Any chance Dick Cheney was involved?

            my fondest wishes as always…

            john

            • I once took a tour of movie star homes in LA (don’t ask, it was my ex-wife’s idea), and as we rounded a corner in Beverly Hills, the announcer got all pumped up about Morey Amsterdam’s house. It was a decrepit 3 bedroom ranch on a lot the size of my carport. I thought to myself, jeez, this is what happens when the Dick Van Dyke show residuals run out…

  19. I love hearing about other people’s dreams, and talking about my own (yes, even though nobody cares).

    I have a lot of weird dreams so I can’t think of one that’s especially wacky, but I will say that I can’t take NyQuil before bed when I’m sick because it gives me psychedelic nightmares.

    • I used to pay three bucks a hit to have psychedelic nightmares. Oops, am I dating myself? Well, at least it’s safer than dating women.

      jtb

      • actually, i think my dreams are a direct result of medication i am on, but i’m not complaining. one in particular, about migrating tortoises was particularly warm and fuzzy. i think back on it fondly. as always, you are my sunshine.

  20. Talk about opening the gates of “dumbassery”
    Dreams are like farts everyone has them but keep them away from me. If you are thinking of wedging the door farther open… I don’t care about the cute thing your cat, dog, hamster did yesterday also.
    Rules are there for a reason.
    ’nuff said

  21. The roof refers to your brain, and the hot tub and trash up there indicates your mind is a hot mess right now, spinning and tilting every which way. I’m not sure what Andy means in the dream, but (K)arla may be right on the money.

  22. I have no idea what your dream means, but it is important to remember that Freud had a very pointy beard.

    Its that good!

  23. I’m totally w (K)arla except for the hot-tub thing-I think that represents your bathroom repair issues “on top” of all the other stresses in your life. But I don’t know jack about dream interpretation.

  24. For a span of about six months, I had a dream where I was being chased by a Tyrannosaur in a jeep, like the scene in Jurassic Park. Every night, six months straight. Only ended after a long night of drinking and a subsequent 20 hour sleep fest, which featured the same dream, with the ending of me shooting the bastard in the face with a .50 caliber machine gun, and then waking up feeling the world’s worst hangover. Never could quite figure that one out, but I was quite happy to get rid of the damned dream.

    • 3 out of 4 dinosaurs agree, a Jeep is much roomy than a Civic (Godzilla held out for his countrymen).

      • Dammit, Gretchen, I knew you didn’t make a wordform mistake. That’s a damn 9-10-10 Tercet with a Japanese poet making a common Japanese/English translation mistake to reduce the syllable count. Also, “countrymen” is an inspired choice.

        j

  25. Good Afternoon Surf Reporters….

    Strange dreams all the time. Terrifying ones occasionally. But recurring dreams of a certain theme that I’ve been told are stress related….

    Back. In. School. (college to be more specific).

    I haven’t been to class in weeks if not months. Now it’s the end of the semester, finals are happening and I can’t remember shit. I’ve forgotten my class schedule, what buildings the classes are in, the whole nine yards.

    I am in a panic trying to get caught up, fearing the professors are pissed off and are going to fail me. These dreams suck.

    • I have those dreams a lot myself, only from the standpoint of a teacher. No books, can’t find the room, someone takes a crap in the classroom, etc. And I’m usually naked or otherwise inappropriately dressed.

    • I have the exact same recurring dream about college. And it’s specific to college–post-grad gets a pass on this one.

      One additional factor: I’m nude.

      • i still get the finals dreams and i’m 75 now, so you have a lot to look forward to. plus, i also dream i’m taking my boards and have no idea what i’m doing.

  26. Oh this is a weird repition in some of my dreams. I can’t dial the phone. I’m punching or dialling and they’e all the wrong numbers and I can’t get my urgent calls through. I wake up frustrated and upset.

    • I have those too. I’m trying to ring my husband and can’t get the number right because the keypad keeps changing. I can’t read in dreams either– the letters jump around like fleas. Frustrating!

  27. Your dream predicts you will find your two CD’s that went AWOL after christmas 2010. You will find them in the least likely place, maybe even find them wedged into your CD tower where they are supposed to be, but your search high and low for them is soon to come to an end.

  28. Ooh, I love dream analysis! Okay, here’s my shot at it:

    Houses and buildings are you. You feel precarious, weak and like the good times are behind you, perhaps also regret about time wasted, as reflected in the mess.

    The walk around town looking for Andy reflects your view of the outside world when you are seeking something of importance, such as assistance or comfort – it’s cruel, harsh, dirty and unhelpful. Since you can’t trust anything or anyone out there to help you, you return to yourself (the building), thinking perhaps you can solve the problem yourself, or maybe it will resolve itself.

    Losing your dog is symbolic of losing close relationships that provided comfort in the storm, further emphasized by his alteration into something unusual and unfamiliar. Kind of like a best friend getting married or selling out to the man, call it what you like.

    The guy with the backpack is also you. You have been asleep, you wake up and realize your life that used to be fun is now garbage-y, and it’s time to go.

    Just armchair quarterbacking. Y’know.

    I always remember house dreams, I guess since they represent state of mind, I subconsciously decide I need to hang onto them. I can remember a house dream from when I was toddler. Weird.

  29. I revise my dream analysis after having read your rules of thumb;
    ” -You CAN judge a book by its cover.”

    You are frettng about what the book editors are going to come up with/okay for your book cover.

  31. I’ve spent many a night on Gilligan’s Island with all of the Bradys, including Alice. Alice was mean.

  32. There’s a hundred different meanings in your dreams that all point to your feeling of being overwhelmed and frustrated. The “tilting” floor is interesting as it represents you are deviating too far from your original plans and goals. Hmmmm…..

    I am really into dream interpretation. I check books and websites all the time because I dream so often and so vividly. My boyfriend thinks it’s all bullshit. But there is much truth to it.

    Dreams that are especially “un-nerving” follow me all day. Hate that. I had this dream when I was little that I have never forgotten or talked about until now.

    The only thing I can remember from it is a man with a shrunken head. For whatever reason, his head “fell off” his shoulders or was beheaded. When his head hit the cement floor it cracked open and a huge piece of what looked to be white chicken breast meat popped out and just rocked back and forth on the floor. UGH.

    I’m gonna be under my desk sucking my thumb now if anyone wants me.

  33. I really hate the dreams where I am busting ass at work. Wake up tired, nothing real got done and there is no overtime pay.

    • Yeah, that’s the worst. I desparately try to finish some crappy impossible task, and even fight waking up so I can get it done. It is a relief though, when you realize you really don’t need to finish after all.

  34. I have lots of strange dreams, many of them involving impending disaster (usually floods) that I futilely try to warn others about. Sometimes people are aware of the horror that is about to befall them, but they don’t care.

    The weirdest dream though, is the recurring one in which my mother is about to give birth to a third child, and while my Dad takes her to the hospital my grandfather serves my sister and I a full-course roast beef dinner in the backseat of his ’71 Dodge and drives us around downtown Detroit as we eat. For some bizarre reason, this dream seems to be triggered by the Flintstones episode where Pebbles is born. I’m not kidding, anytime I’ve seen that episode, I have the dream decribed above the same night. Weird…

    • Floods are an occurring nightmare – that and dirty black water I’m being submerged in.

      Another is rickety steps or bridges. I HATE that.

  37. Your dream sounds like the movie “Dark City”.

    I have mostly vivid, unpleasant dreams. Just in time for the holidays this year, I dreamt that a creepy Santa dressed in purple was skittering around on my bedroom ceiling with a knife in his mouth, I suppose with which to cut me like a Christmas ham. I woke up myself, my husband, and possibly my neighbors screaming, “KILL THE SANTA!!” Remember folks, you can’t spell “Santa” without “Satan”!

    • I saw this story – fucking sick. Even if the mother was strung out, how could you not hear that baby screaming? Unless the baby was practicing to be a Mime or was, legitimately mute, there is no way that baby ddn’t scream bloody murder. That’s how 4 month olds communicate – SCREAM.

  40. There was a case in cincy recently where a pilled out mom slept for 13 hours while her baby (I forget how old, but not very mobile) roasted to death on a baseboard heater.

  41. Why are the roughnecks black and the meth-freaks white? And where are the Asians and the Mexicans????? I want rough looking Asians and Mexicans with bad teeth, damn it!

  42. I have always had crazy and vivid dreams.

    About 5 years ago, I dreamed I was in my parent’s house alone. I hear the back door open and someone quietly walking around inside the house. I peek around the corner and see a Japanese soldier dressed in full military gear, just like World War 2, rifle, bayonet, and all. I sneak out the back door to get away, but he sees me and starts to chase me outside as I run several city blocks with him just a few steps behind me. I come to the rail road tracks and a train is passing by, so I dive under it hoping to roll out on the other side without being killed by the wheels to get away from him.

    At this point, I actually dove out of bed and smashed my right knee on the hard wood floor and woke up bleeding. My wife thought I was having a stroke or a heart attack and was freaking out. The gash on my knee was about 3 inches long and turned black and blue for several weeks.

    Here is my most recent weird one, among many:
    Real life: I grew up across the street from Anita, she is about 10 years older than me. Anita married Bob in late 70’s. I got to know Bob pretty well from visiting during holidays at my parent’s house. About 3 months ago, Bob died of cancer.

    Dream: I dreamed that Bob took me down to his basement and was showing me some boxes of stuff he had inherited from his father. One item was a shoe shine box, really old and very ornate, with drawers inside of it that held brushes, wax, polish, etc. One of the drawers had 2 brass keys in it. I got the impression that the keys were somehow important, but I did not ask Bob anything about the keys in the dream.

    Keep in mind that I have never been in Bob and Anita’s house, only visiting at Anita’s parent’s house across the street from my folks, or at my parent’s house.

    Real life: I mentioned the dream to my Mom a few days later on the phone and told her to ask Anita if she was looking for keys to something. (We live 300 miles apart, I am in Eastern PA, they are in West Virginia)

    A few weeks later, my Mom ran into Anita at the grocery store. She asked Anita that question and Anita said she could not find the keys to their safety deposit box at the bank. Mom asked her if Bob had an old shoe shine box. Anita responded yes. Mom told her about my dream, Anita went home and the keys were exactly where I dreamed they would be. Is that strange or what???

  43. Last night I had a dream a giant hamburger was eating ME!

    Don’t have time for a full on analysis, but the unruly thugs and white trash definitely represent the Surf Reporters. Sorry if that was pointed out already, but I didn’t read the replies.

  44. Last week I had a nice dream that followed me all day. Johnny Depp, wearing the t-shirt he’s wearing on the cover of Vanity Fair, was flirting with me. yum

    I used to have a recurring dream of trying to get from point A to point B – i don’t know where point B is and why I need to get there, but I’m in a rush — not panicking but I feel an urgency. When this happens, I need to travel. Last time, it was in 2002 I think and I booked a flight to San Diego.

  45. I rarely dream but strangely the dream I will also remember is of my past beloved dog. He was a 140lb dog that slept at the end of my bed (named Homer) – died about 10 years ago and still cry when I think about it. Anyway, I think I had just taken motorcycle lessons at the time… figured, I shouldn’t persue it if I valued life- stick to mtn biking.

    Anyways – dream…. My dog was about the size of a great dane. He was on the the back of my motorcycle and his legs kept dangling off, so I kept having to get off the bike then tuck them under his torso. Then we were on a dock headed toward the ocean on my motorcycle and a train was headed towards us. He fell into the rough ocean and I was screaming and crying “Homer’, Homer”, “Homer”. Then he surfaced snorting water – I woke up to him snoring at the end of the bed – gave him a huge hug and tried to go back to sleep.

    I’ve had a couple of strange/disturbing/wtf dreams – but those are usually when I am lightly sleeping, I don’t remember those for long.

    Will now go back and read about your stories.

  48. Recurring dream – waiter and I keep getting farther and farther behind with my orders with some not even making to the kitchen…ever… I believe it’s all stress related and my fear of letting people down. Once I wake and realize it’s a dream I can relax.

    I dream about work a lot. Usually that I’ve screwed up but again, waking up I feel relaxed and confident knowing the screwups were just dreams.

  49. Jeff. I’ll say it since everyone else seems to be skirting the issues…. your dreams? Loaded with homo-erotic symbolism. Sorry bud.

    Truthfully, well told and an enjoyable read. As always.