Dream Journal: Wait for the T-Rex (March 20, 2008)

DREAM

1. Last night I dreamed that I was on top of a beautiful mountain. My purpose was to descend the steep face and go swimming in a lake below, all without dying. The mountain was INCREDIBLY STEEP! Instead of taking the traditional way down, I chose to travel down a natural valley by trekking a little ways further around the top. I thought my way would be safer--it wasn't. Although I made it down around the same time as the rest of the group, I nearly flayed my skin off sliding through granite shoots and then suffocated making my way through an underground briar patch. We all played in the lake at the bottom. The, for some dumb reason, I convinced myself that it would be easier to travel back up the mountain the way I came. I got about half way up before I scaled my way back over to the beaten path.
2. I was at a stake-dance-like function with a bunch of young adults. I didn't dance most of the night; I just stood around in the middle watching others dance poorly. The final dance was a choreographed line dance that used chairs as props. I didn't know the dance but I thought it would be funny to jump in anyway seeing as chair-to-dancer ration was very high. (I recognized a few kids in the group as EFY counselors.) We frantically connected all the chairs by interlocking the sides so they were grouped into three rows of ten chairs. We all bounced up and down to made the rows of chairs rotate in a big circle. Our bouncing became more and more exaggerated until we were sliding all over the gym hardwood floor. Everyone could hear awful scraping noises. I was terrified that we were leaving deep scratches the panels but when I looked down, the floors were miraculously unharmed.
3. This was the best one. Spencer Tanner was telling me a bedtime story that he wrote. We opened the cover together and then I was there. (I was expecting some sort of princely opening with a "Once upon a time"--but no! I hit the ground and found that I was amongst a group of terrified villagers scattering in all directions. I paused to look for the source of the chaos; that was a mistake. I soon found blood-thirsty dinosaurs chasing after each other and people. As my eyes continued to scan my surroundings, they fixed on a mini T-rex speeding directly towards me. I ran, changing course every 50 meters. Despite my best efforts to elude him, I couldn't shake him. Eventually, I found myself back on a cliff of the mountain in part one of my dream. I turned to face my predator, wondering if he would first tear my face off or go straight for the disembowelment. To my surprise, the T-Rex stopped just in front of me and ROARED, "I is Awesomeist!" (I really can't remember what happened after that. I was so shaken up that any memory of a resolution to this dream was quickly replace with the memory of the incredible climax to the story. I do remember closing the book and saying to Spencer, "Your mom must be proud." Secretly, I thought to myself, why couldn't I have thought up such an awesome story?