Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
December 6, 2009

To Sleep, Perchance to Bad Dream

Journal Entry:  October 23, 1976 (age 7)

As my back sank against the cold tile wall, my arms flailed madly in a final, futile effort to keep IT from getting me.  My heart, pounding on the door of my chest, wanted to be let out.  I looked up into the harsh light and cried out the answer the thing was demanding of me.  “Gerald Ford!  Gerald Ford!!”

There was a pause.  “That’s right, Timmy.  And where are you now?”  The questioner’s voice was transforming from demonic to dad-like.  “The bathroom?,” I said, looking confusedly around me.  Why was I crouched in the bathtub, wearing my plaid flannel PJs?  Why were my bleary-eyed parents standing over me, wearing their PJs?  Why had the snarling, yellow, face-feasting fiend disappeared?  (Had peer pressure sent him searching for his own PJs?)

That was last night.  I’ve had lots of bad dreams before, but that one was a doozy.  My older brothers said this one was in the all-time top 10 of “Timmy freak-outs.”  All the bad ones end with a debriefing by my dad.  He has a really deep, comforting voice, and it brings me back to Earth pretty quickly.

Now, I’m angry at myself for last night.  I forgot to use a very useful trick I picked up a dozen dreams ago.  During another recent visit from the Yellow Thing, it occurred to me that I was having a nightmare, and that I could simply choose to wake up.  I remember smiling at the disappointed face of my corn-colored enemy as I melted from his grasp. “So long, sucker!”

I think my main monster spent the intervening waking hours coming up with an effective counter-attack.  Last night, he pursued me with such full-throttle, screeching persistence that I didn’t have time to think about my state of consciousness.  Next time, I’m going to stop him with a stiff arm right away and say, “Alright, hang on a second there, Sparky.”  That’ll give me time to pull a sweatshirt over his head that says, “Kick me – I’m a figment.”

That will still leave me with the problems posed by my other recurring nightmare.  I’m not sure it’s really a dream, though, because it doesn’t consist of sight and sound.  It’s more of a “touchmare.”  Sometimes when I’m lying in the dark, I feel the things around me getting bigger and heavier.  My blanket suddenly feels like a thick slab of concrete, and everything in my bedroom starts to loom over me.  This isn’t something that I see, but I always get the mental image of a single hair exploding out to the thickness of a tree trunk.  It’s hard to breathe, because I feel like the whole world is crushing me.

Yeah, that one is worse.  I’m trapped under all that weight, so I can’t get up and slam around the house until my parents wake up.  I can’t even make a sound.  I guess I could try the whole “I know this is a dream” thing, but I’d already be in my bedroom, so there’d be nowhere to travel back to.  Plus, I’d need to bring a much bigger sweatshirt.

Another weird thing is that I can’t remember how that dream ends, or how I wake up.  Maybe I finally manage to get out a single word:  “Ow.”

© 2009 Tim Mollen

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