h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh, definitely. I'd gotten halfway through school when my dad woke me up. Talk about a long day...

One dream I've had a few times is of being late, rushing out of the house and off to the tube, sometimes realising that I've forgotten something important I was going to take, but carrying on regardless, but always ending similarly when pain from my feet makes me notice that I've forgotten to put any shoes on (sometimes it's just shoes I've forgotten, sometimes I'm just in socks and pants). I end up starting to hobble back home, but that's where the dream seems to end, or I wake up.

I was once sitting in the couch reading a book, I've read before. I read the book to the finish. Then I woke up, and realised I was only around the middle of the book. I had simply had a realistic dream of reading the rest of the book. I think it was Year of the Werewolf by Stephen King.

I also once tried the night before an exam I was dreaming I went up to an exam that wen't pretty badly. Then I found out it had been just a dream and that I still had to go to the real one. So I did and it went alright. So it was kind of bad when I found out that was also just a dream. I think I dreamed I was going to exam five times that night. When it was finally the real one it did feel a bit surreal. I wasn't too sure if I should take it seriously for what if it was just another dream?

I only occasionally have dreams where I'm not fully dressed. There's no sense of embarassment until the 'dream me' realises I'm not wearing a skirt / panties / whatever. Then I try to dress without everybody else in the dream noticing what I'm doing. I seem to reason that they won't know I'm only half-dressed if they don't noticing me dressing. (Kind of like the Bugblatter Beast of Traal - it thinks it can't see you if you can't see it!) I don't think I've ever dreamed of dying.

One problem I have is with my alarm clock. It's a clock-radio, which wakes me with the alarm. After it's gone off I switch it to 'radio' (Radio 4) and hit 'snooze'. If I go back to sleep, the voices on the radio affect my dreams. This morning I think they were talking about Islamic terrorists, because in my dream I found myself in an old van trying to follow and stop some terrorists.

that falling feeling.....

I have been told, I dont remember by whom,..... that the falling feeling in dreams, which often wakes you up with a jerk, has an evolutionary explanation.

It is the reflex that is pesent in mammals like whales and dolphins which gives them a jolt if they have been underwater too long and need to resurface in order to breath. It is theorised that the jolt we feel is triggered by our not breathing properly while we are asleep and this wakes us up enough to make us take a breath. There is also another theory which is that certain people are missing this reflex and this accounts for some cases of people dying in their sleep, they just forget to breath.





as for dreaming in BW or colour. colour. definatly. I've never dreamt in BW but I often dream mainly in shades of green and brown, but only when ther are no people. people are relly bright pink normally, or otherwise I cant really look at them, I just know they are ther.

I often have that really horrid feeling and I nver know if I am awake ofr asleep, where you want to open your eyes but can;t because your eyelids are just so damn heavy.

I also frequently dream that it is shortly before an exam, like a few days/hours/minutes. whenever it is it is too late to do any effective revision. and I realise that i have done no work, or have revised the wrong thing, but it is too late to change anything. It's a really horrid feeling. I then also get the feeling you get when your results arrive and you have to go and tell your mum that you have screwed up again!

My dreams tend not to have sound. the only time I m concious of sound is when I am trying to get people to listen to me and they wont (also one of my most common) I can be shouting away forever and they just dont take any notice. I dont think about if I am acually making any noise though, dont know if I am or not. I just try to. the reason they dont hear me is cos they're not listning, not becuase of what I might be doing.

I also have running dreams where I am trying to move and not getting anywhere. the feeling generated by all my dreams is really a variation on a themem of frustration and fear.

I think its a reflection of my life, which is spent taking exams and running for the bus.

the most frightening thing for me is when I dream that someone calls my name just as i am baout to be asleep. its really loud and right next to my ear. i hate that.

FABT

I once had a dream in which i had a conversation that ran like this:

ME: What took you so long
OTHER PERSON: There was a couple making love on a bed in the midlle of the road, the traffic was all backed up.
ME: Wow, just like in Tropic of Cancer, by Norman Mailer.
OTHER PERSON: Don't be silly, Mailer didn't write Tropic of Cancer, that was Hentry Miller
ME: (Afetr some consideration) Oh yeah, your right.

The reason i mention this is that it was a concoiusness other than mine that corrected me, and i had to think really hard to work out if they were right, and in fact the effort of thinking who was right woke me up.

wow, who else is living in your head?

can you access them during exams?

FABT

Who's been sleeping in your brain?

FABT, that would be OK if they were cleverer than you How can you control who it would be?

Am I the first to post that I'm not actually sure about either question?

I *very* rarely remember my dreams although i know I do dream. I will know about the dream a few minutes after waking up and then the memory disappears. If I tell someone about it first then I will remember it.

I know I have talked to people in my dreams but I cannot explicitly state that there was any sound involved. Similarly I would imagine I dream in colour but really have no clue as to whether I do or not

FABT, I'm worried... your dreams aren't like mine at all!

My wife said the same thing offline about not being sure which it was because she didn't remember her dreams.

But I woke her in the middle of the night and asked her and she said it was in colour.

bet she was thrilled.




MaW
why would my dreams be the same as yours? I don;t spend my day thinking about burning police stations do I? now, if it was a burning pyramid and being chased by mummies i could understand it, after all, i do spend way too much time moving dead egyptian bits around a basement.

FABT

The dreams I can remember have always been in color, with full sound, and touch, but no taste. For example, if I try to eat something in a dream, I wake up. I cannot remember if my dreams smell or not.

I occasionally have falling dreams, mostly when I'm in some awkward position, particularly in a moving vehicle. I never know how it happens, but every so often, I find myself falling off a cliff or something similar. I invariably wake up from these dreams when my foot jerks. Once I had a dream that I was in a boxing ring, about to get punched. That time it was my arm that jerked, trying to fend off the blow.

Has anyone else ever woken up because they realized something which violated the rules of their dream world? This happens to me every so often, when I'm struggling to get to the surface of the water, and I can't quite make it, so finally I let out my breath and breathe in...and I can breathe! And at that point, I know it's a dream, and I wake up.*pouts*

I always dream in colour, in silence. I often dream of things I want to happen; waking up is often quite a lot of a letdown. I often dream of people; I'll know who they are, think about it, and then realize that dream them didn't look like real them... or in one case I dreamt about someone I hadn't met yet, so they couldn't have looked like themselves...
Sometimes I'll have a really vivid picture in my mind of someone who I know I haven't met, and who doesn't have a name attached to them in my dream...

My housemate thinks his dreams have special effects budgets.... if he has one with lots of explosions etc on one day, he can pretty much garantee to have French Arthouse dreams for the next few days...

FABT, I don't spend my days thinking about burning police stations. I had that dream once... and it was AT NIGHT. Honestly... during the day, I think about computery things in preparation for my exams.

Which is what I dreamed about last night, unsurprisingly enough.

I used to dream about Tetris blocks falling!

It was a long time ago!

Don't talk to me about the Tetris dream! And trying to close down Windows, with thousands of windows popping up faster than i can click them off.

Last night i dreams i was nearly run down by an ice cream van, and when i looked at the lettering on the front it read "al-Qaida" - watch out people, it's an omen, these guys will sink to any depth. Our 99's are not safe.

Ok, that's scary.

Occasionally, after playing the game for a long time, I see Tetris Attack blocks on the backs of my eyelids. It happens with Bejeweled on the MSN Gaming Zone, too.

Maybe I'm too dependent on electronics...

Nah, I see computer games behind my eyes when I close them after playing for hours... sometimes it's nice, but sometimes it's distracting when trying to get to sleep!