Wildest Dreams

In 1944, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello played a pair of plumbers in a film called In Society.

I haven’t seen the movie in years, but I do recall the famous Bagel Street scene, where Lou is assailed by a series of lunatics in a disastrous attempt to deliver a container full of straw hats to the Susquehanna Hat Co.

The picture also introduced the song “My Dreams are Getting Better All the Time,” which was written by Vic Mizzy and Manny Curtis, and which has taken on a special meaning for me given some of my recent REM sleep experiences.

“Well, what do you know,” the song begins. “He smiled at me in my dreams last night. My dreams are getting better all the time.”

I can’t honestly say my dreams are getting any better, but they are certainly getting weirder.

A few weeks back, I described a dream where I was living in Boise, Idaho--yeah, I don’t get it, either--and falling in love with a woman who coached a high school basketball team.

And then I dreamed I’d had lunch with an old friend in a museum cafeteria.

I’ve had a series of gems since those surreal encounters that I’ve been trying to deceipher.

The first one was pretty straightforward. I’d recently received a survey in the mail about my availability for jury duty, which means an actual notice is sure to follow.

That evening, I dreamed I was in an office in Hoboken, NJ—hey, it’s closer than Boise—where I was waiting for my jury paperwork. It was taking so long to process that I was worried I’d be fined by the judge.

Finally, I was given a stack of papers that bore no resemblance to the little pink card the courts used to send out.

Okay, this one is simple to unravel. I was worried about jury duty and that concern leaked over into my sleep time.

Next up was an affair of the heart that muscled into my mind.

In this dream, I’m wondering around a very crowded department store weighed down by two shopping bags filled with liter bottles of diet soda.

Yeah, that’s the stuff I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to quit every New Year’s Day since the Hoover Administration.

Soda Jerk

Here, I was waiting for a woman whom I had briefly dated to pick me up and take me the hell home.

However, I look up and see her driving away from the store and leaving my hold the bag(s).

I had recently come to the real-world conclusion that, despite my initial enthusiasm, the relationship wasn’t going anywhere.

I had convinced myself that I had moved on, but my subconscious mind cooked up this little scenario to inform me that I was still quite disappointed.

By the way, my auntie and my sister, who have been after me for years to quit diet soda, got a kick out of the shopping bag burden.

And finally, we have a most bizarre epic that had me pushing around a wheelchair that I didn’t need. I finally ditched it and the next thing I know I’m crawling along a ledge on a building in Manhattan.

I have a fear of heights in the daylight hours, but here I was creeping along God knows how many stories up in the air.

A woman in an apartment was waving at me and telling me to enter a room through the window and retrieve a DVD for her.

“You’re inside,” I shouted. “Why don’t you get it yourself?”

Somehow, I enter the apartment and join an ongoing party. As I leave, one of the guests tells me the woman and her husband are very important people and I regret calling it a night so early.

I try to retrieve my unattended wheelchair, but, of course, somebody swiped it and I end up riding a bus down very narrow street.

Okay, so this dream is chockfull of all sorts of clues and images. The wheelchair suggests my habit of carrying useless memories and emotions.

Leaving the thing behind and hoping nobody steals it indicates my habit of hoping for good things to naturally happen without any effort on my part.

I think the ledge crawl to the party represents my efforts to socialize more and how challenging it has been for me.

Exiting the party too soon is something I’ve done all too often in real life.

We have a mixed psychological bag of fears and desires and I’m going to see if I can use these dreams to improve my life and break some old habits.

But if I dream about the Susquehanna Hat Co. all bets are off.