Talking about dreams always leaves you wanting more.

“Since before I can remember being able to speak I have had a reoccurring dream. When it ends I feel incomplete for several days.” My sister, Caitlin, was guiding our car expertly down the road. This was the environment we often found ourselves in before we discussed a heavy issue, whether it be personal, philosophical, spiritual, or governmental. I rode shotgun as we journeyed through the night.
Caitlin stared at me quizzically, “you mean like a nightmare?”
The car drifts left, “Will you please watch the road?”
“Yeah, yeah.” We jerk to the right.
“No, just a dream, but it has instilled moments of fear at times.”
“Well, what happens in your dream?”
I began to pull words from the jumble of my mind and move them to the tip of my tongue and, instead, thought it best to preface it more. “Well, it has been different every time…”
“Not much of a reoccurring dream then, is it?” she interrupted.
“It gets longer each time and more details are exposed.” I continued.
“Oh, how so?” her tone made it seem like she thought of it as fodder for gossip and not worth her intellectual prowess.
“Actually, now that I think of it, the details are the same but the perspective is different and it’s only the ending that grows longer.”
She seemed to chew her bottom lip as she navigated an onramp. “Let’s hold up for a second here. Your perspective actually becomes that of someone else? Like out-of-body or something like that?”
I should have realized that trying to describe a dream was not something you just do with great ease. “Sort of, but you have to understand that there are different characters within my dream and that each one plays a role with certain motions. In my dream I assume the role of one of the characters and perform his motions. Any thoughts are my own and not of the characters.”
I could tell from the incline of her head that she was on the same page as me; it was our form of nonverbal communication. “So each dream is the same but differs in its characters.”
She didn’t get it.
“You need to understand that the same characters are present in every dream.”
“Who are these characters? Do they have names? Do you talk to them? Have little tea parties with them?” she flashed a patronizing smile.
“You just love this, don’t you?”
“Yeah, you make my dorm mates seem sane.”
“You missed a shift.” I thought that I had moved beyond being jealous of her superiority at all things, but pointing out this little flaw made me happy. Her nasty side-glance cut me back down.
“So anyways, describe the characters.”
“Well, the first time I was myself, a young boy sitting at a window looking at a yellow flower in the window box outside. Beyond the flower is a cartoonishly picturesque street lined with white houses that have red shutters. In the street is the second character I became, he is a mailman who is walking down the street delivering the mail and whistling a tune that I can feel but cannot hear.”
“Wow.” Her face carried an impressed look.
“What?”
“Well, it’s just the mailman part. I mean, have you every even seen a mailman delivering mail on foot?”
I thought on it for a second and found no memories outside of Mister Rodger’s Neighborhood. I relayed this and she got a big smile.
“Doctor!” she shouted in a German accent, “I believe we have found out what is wrong with the boy.”
She paused for dramatic effect, so I ruined it. “What?!”
“Either you are watching too much T.V. or you are certifiably insane.”
“There is more if you let me continue.”
“Do tell.”
“There is a long road line with trees just beyond the houses. The road leads to a bank where robbers pull up in a different car each dream. They get out of the car and charge into the bank. Seconds later they charge back out and stuff a safe into the trunk and drive off. Each time I see the robbery at a different angle.”
“Is it scary?”
“Not really. Each time I feel like I should stop them but I am unable to move or shout. It did become scary last time I had it. The robbers did the same thing, you know. They drove up and went into the bank but when they came out the bank looked more like a industrial building and they were carrying a person trapped in a block of cement.”
She frowned. “Was it Han Solo?”
“No, but what does it mean?”