Sweet Dreams?...Maybe Not!

In a recent conversation with Friend, we got on the subject of strange and unusual dreams. The problem with having an unusual dream is remembering that you actually have had an unusual dream. (I forget my dreams usually.) I don't have the same dreams that I had when I was a child. Luckily, I wasn't one of those kids that had night terrors or dreams of the Boogie Man trying to grab me from underneath the bed. I wasn't scared of the dark and I was able to sleep peacefully without the aid of a nightlight. When I went to bed, I usually slept like a rock. However, there is one occasion that I do remember from my childhood of having an unusual dream; it wasn't so much that it was strange it was just scary. There was a mini-series on television called How The West Was Won when I was growing up that we watched every time it was on. From the title you can probably guess what it was about: the settling of the American Frontier. In my mind as I remember it, there were two different characters and scenes involving snakes. Have I mentioned before that I'm not very fond of snakes? The first scene involved a minister, preacher or reverend that used snakes in his worship service as a way to prove his faith to his congregation. The second scene involved settlers sleeping on the ground and because of the coolness of the night waking up with snakes in their bedroll. Now, I'm not sure about you, but this is a situation that I never want to in--whether sleeping or in real life! My dream went something like this: I awoke in my little twin bed and was too petrified to move; my bed was filled with snakes. I was dreaming that Mom had tucked me in so well the night before that I couldn't pull the sheets from the side of the bed and I was stuck with the snakes--in bed with me. Wowza! I still get the heebie jeebies just thinking about it today. I remember that it took me several moments to awaken and convince myself that, indeed, no snakes were in the bed with me. Looking back that must have really been some dream for me to remember it 35 years later and it taught me something that I adhere to still today: I don't watch anything that has a snake in it!