There are only three dreams I remember in my life time.  Two were from my early childhood and shared a similar theme, which I'll save for a later blog at some point.  The third I remember because I wrote it down, or rather I typed it, pretty soon after I woke up.  I was talking with one of the guys at work last week about dreams and I remembered this one.  After a brief search in the bedroom, I found the print out I made it.  So, here it is, make of it what you will.

Agent S.

A train rolls down the track slowly.

A window closes on a passenger car.  Inside we see a masked man like the G.I.Joe character Snake-Eyes.

Pan forward to a flat-bed car where a father and daughter are rummaging through boxes.  There is interaction between the two.  The father loves his daughter very much but seems distracted  The daughter looks behind the father and becomes scared.  She sees Agent S standing behind her father, at the edge of the car.  The father turns, gets scared and shuffles to the opposite side of the car, clutching his daughter.

Agent S pulls out a sai and throws it at them.  It lands at the father's feet, stuck into the floor.  The father and daughter look up and Agent S is gone.  The message is clear.  Either the father takes his own life, or it will be taken for him.

The father picks up the weapon and tells his daughter he loves her, telling her to turn around.  He holds the weapon in front of him, the tip pointed at his chest.

End.

I awoke early this morning from a dream.  It started with me in a department store with friends.  A celebrity was coming to town, for the life of me I can't remember who, and we thought it'd be hilarious to have him sign used video game equipment and old video game cartridges.  As the crows of people around me grew, we decided on having him sign a large spoon, slotted together with something else by way of a cheese slicer.  Several of us were trying different things, but nothing seemed to work.  I had an idea to check other items in the store and went off in another direction, saying to myself, "Think, Jazz, think."

Slowly, I started to become Jazz from the Transformers, a hybrid of the new animated version, the movie version, and the original.  I could hear cheering, which meant that a solution was found where I was.  I rushed back only to find everyone gone to get their autographs. As the store was closing, the lights went out and I, as Jazz, grabbed some cardboard boxes to break down for recycle.  As I enter the back room, I hear narration, "Jazz knew this would be the last time the store would be quiet this time of night... and he was right."  I turn to see something glistening just past the doorway and I throw a round piece of cardboard at it.  It misses and then... I wake up.

Earlier in the dream, or perhaps in another dream altogether, I was teaching my teenage daughter (who does not exist in real life) how to drive, with my Dad.  We drove all around town and she proved to be a chip off the old block by having a lead foot.  She got two speeding tickets and then at some point, my Dad and I watched from outside the car as she got a third and was hauled down to the police station.  See, they had a three-strikes rule with learning drivers.  Once at the police station, I watch the officer pull up all the charges, some quite expensive.  The officer said that she showed no remorse at going over 15 mph the speed limit.  The total due was over $2,000.  My Dad balked at that and asked how she was going to be able to afford that.  I chimed in that even we, referring to myself and Dad, couldn't afford that.  To the best of my knowledge, the dream didn't resolve itself.

I awoke this morning from a dream that I wish I could have experienced longer.  So, I came out to the living room to blog about it before I completely forget all the details.  That and it's excruciatingly hot in the bedroom.

In the dream, Mom and I would go about things, but there would be this man following us.  It would turn out to be my Dad.  While Mom embraced the idea that he was back, I remained somewhat skeptical.  I mean, we have the cremains, right?  At one point, we're walking along a windy mountain road that is actually on an island.  Mom is uncharacteristically ahead and I find myself shouting at Dad to catch up as he stopped to look at something in the water by a guard rail.

We eventually made it home and I try to confront Mom with the fact that this couldn't be Dad because Dad is dead.  She wouldn't hear of it and went into the garage to get him.  I started to think about her sister, long since passed away, and then my Aunt was standing right there beside me.  I thought that this would prove to Mom that this couldn't really be Dad.  So, when I showed Mom that her sister was back and told her how strange this was, she replied with something along the lines of, "Yes it is a strange day, isn't it?"

Dad came in from the garage and I found myself dressed in some weird, open-helmet Star Wars costume and pointed a toy lightsaber at him as he was going to, what I felt was literally, disappear into the dark hall leading to the bedrooms in my parent's home.  Now, Dad was dressed as Darth Vader, who he always told me was his favorite character from Star Wars (the original trilogy), and I followed him into the darkness, my lightsaber giving off enough light to keep him in sight.

The pursuit ended in the 1/2-bath in the master bedroom, which is barely large enough for two grown men to stand in, and I said in a semi-serious, semi-playful tone that I wanted him to reveal himself.  Darth Vader took off his helmet and costume to reveal my Dad.  I was overjoyed and gave him a kiss and a hug.  Realizing how wonderful it felt to hold him again, and it did feel so real in my dream - so wonderfully, fantastically real, I gave him another kiss and another hug.

"I know what's going on here," I said as he started to tie a weird cloth mask around his face.  "I know that you're dead.  You have to stop tormenting Mom.  She's been through so much."  He replied with something like, "What she doesn't know won't hurt her," or something along those lines.  I started to rebuke him when I woke up.

I sat there for a moment and wanted to cry, but didn't.  Instead, I grabbed my plastic water cup from last night, came out to the living room and lit Dad's memorial candle, refilled the cup with ice and water and as I waited for the computer to boot up I talked to Dad through the candle thanking him for the dream.  I talked about a few other things, but I tried to focus on the positive side of things, especially those hugs and kisses.

Man, those felt really good.  Really, really good.