“I Had a Dream…”

Posted by Maximum Fun on 26th July 2006

Yesterday, I asked Sound of Young America listeners to share some sweet dreams they’ve had. Back in the Olden Tymes of the Sound, I did a regular feature called “American Dreamers,” with folks recounting bizarre dreams. Like this one, in which my friend met Springsteen. Anyhoo, here’s what you came up with:

“Around the fourth of July I had a dream about George Washington. My dream was that it was my job to gather food for the Continental Army. So, my mother and I went to the grocery store and got food. Then, we used the self-checkout line, which was really inconsistent with the time period, seeing as my dream was taking place over 200 years ago.”

“Two weeks ago, I had a dream I was at a water park with *the Shins*! I was dressed inappropriately (i.e. t-shirt and shorts instead of a bathing suit), but so were they, so it was cool. We were on one of those log rides, at the tippity top where you just plunge straight down. James Mercer (lead singer) was in front. I remember he was scared to go down; nobody wanted to get in front. I was sandwiched between him and this other guy, who in my dream was the drummer for the Shins, but, in retrospect, looked nothing like Dave Hernandez. The drummer guy and I hit it off and after we got off the log ride, we were just talking and laughing. I remember being so happy, only slightly bothered that Marty Crandall (keyboardist and my fav member) didn’t really seem to care one way or the other about me. Then, I woke up. Dammit.”

“I had this dream when I visited San Francisco a couple of years ago. It starts off with me walking through a downtown area of SF that I don’t think really exists. I walk up to someone selling ice cream cones and run into Conan O’Brien. Of course I buy a cone for each of us and he asks me to carry a large package with him to his studio. I think the box had some kind of live animal inside of it for use in a sketch. I never see the animal, but I think it was supposed to be a ferret or something. Of course it gets out of the box and Conan and I chase it, then he decides to shoot it. And Conan and I find this hilarious. We start laughing, we hug and he invites me to come on his show (presumably to fill the time of the sketch we’ve now ruined). Unfortunately I woke up before my appearance, but chumming it up with Conan
was awesome enough.”

“I’m not sure the dream would be called sweet, but then again, I’m my own harshest critic. Especially when it comes to my sweet dreams. But as to the dream. I can’t believe it even happened. That’s how sweet it was. Anyways the dream went something like, some incarnation of me becoming a super villain with superpowers because previously all the other super villains before that had only uncanny powers. In this dream world the villains were the socially acceptable bunch while the heroes were shunned from society. I will say though, that the dream seemed like it went 45 mins too long. It didn’t even have people fighting just a lot of flying and catching things from falling. Actually I retract my earlier statement of this being a sweet dream. It was more of a mediocre at best dream.”

“Last night I had a dream that I was mugged in a subway station. There were two muggers. I reached into my pocket and gave them $75. They looked me up and down and gave me $40 back.”

“My friend ty and i were walking down the cereal aisle at a grocery store. he was going to buy me an engagement present (i assume i was engaged to my current girlfriend, but it was never explicitly stated in the dream) of three boxes of cereal. i picked up a box of honey bunches of oats first. ty then pointed at a box of honey nut cheerios and said “you like those, right?” i said “no, those are gross.” “well, what about the flakes?” he said, pointing at a box of honey nut cheerios flakes. i was too confused to respond at this point. i was looking for a box of spider-man cereal when ty asked “so what did father courville (the priest at my girlfriend’s church) say to you?” “uhh…” i said, “i dunno? flush twice? he didn’t really say anything to me.” it was at that point that i realized the boxes of cereal ty was buying for me were magic boxes that would never be empty. this made his gift seem a lot less chintzy. then i found, on the bottom shelf, a cereal called “BULLSHIT.” the front of the box looked like this:


the back of the box had little pictures of the cereal pieces, which looked like cyrillic alpha bits or something. there was also a little sidebar that said “BULLSHITS breakfast cereal contains little bits of oaty crap, which are of no nutritional value whatsoever.” i showed it to ty, who said “that’s not a nice cereal,” and went to peruse the ground beef in the meat freezer. i was just about to settle for a box of lucky charms when i woke up.”

“I had a dream that I was on a train. Each time the train came to a stop, we would discover that we had all mysteriously gone back in time several days. There was a soda machine on the train labeled “Diet Choke” instead of “Diet Coke”. Assuming it was just a typo, I took a drink. I promptly choked to death.”

“The other night I dreamed I went to my sister and brother in law’s house. The house was bulging at the seams from the outside, as though the walls were made of a rubbery substance. My curiosity was piqued to say the least. I asked my bro-in-law as to what was making this occur. he said “Dubloons, lad, mad , filthy dubloons!” We walked into the house, and the living room had morphed from a modest, tastefully decorated space into a large church like space. My seven year old niece was playing a large church organ; the tunes were a medley of this commercial (shown regionally I think) from Dunkin’ Donuts. Every time a certain chord was hit (usually a minor chord) scads of gold coins would shoot out of the organ pipes and shower down on us. “This is the last room. All the others are filled with cash. I’ve hit the mint with this talented little scamp”, said my brother in law. My two year old son picked a coin up off of the floor and bit into it, testing it’s validity, much the same way “Underdog” did as Shoeshine boy. “It’s all his!” said my bro-in-law, now morphing into the “monopoly man”, monocle, top hat, and all. I woke up feeling woefully inadequate as a dad. Still, it was a sweet dream. My family was doing pretty well, and my boy got a gold dubloon.”