Nap Dreaming

Doesn't that title sound pleasant?  Ahh, napping, and dreaming, probably cozied up on a couch, enveloped in a soft and fluffy blanket, drowsily whiling the afternoon away.

Yeah, well, that would be deceptive. 

Because, my friends, I HATE nap dreaming.  I'm not sure if it is just my screwed-up subconscious or if everyone suffers from these nappish nightmares.  I've not really heard anyone else complaining of heart palpitations upon awaking, nor have I noticed fellow nappers suddenly springing to their feet, eyes wide and arms flailing, only to retreat into a corner and sit, shaking, hugging their knees to their chest.  So I'm guessing it's just me.

Let's take today, for example.  Cody's truck is malfunctioning, and because he needed the car, he had to drop me off at work today.  At 7:45am.  My store opens at 10am.  And Los Angeles, with whom I do most of my business, is 2 hours behind Texas, meaning that I normally have to wait until at least 11am before starting my re-orders and other Californian correspondence.  And while I have been known to waste an incredible amount of time doing nothing on the Internet, I normally don't start all that until a little later in the morning.  Like, you know - after I don't want to die anymore.  7:45am is something I feel is better left alone and undisturbed, like nuclear weapons and tripe.

(As an aside, I realize that all this talk of early mornings may have you kind of starting to hate me.  Please contrast my getting to sleep in every day to the fact that you do, probably, get a paycheck.  And I do not.  There, feeling better?)

Anyway.  Cody dropped me off, I stumbled into my store, locked the door behind me, and headed directly for the little sofa that sits near the dressing rooms.  Normally a finicky person about germs and who has been where, I didn't even pause as I threw myself down, covered up with the chenille blanket that currently serves to cover the Plaid Awfulness that is the sofa's upholstery, and fell back asleep.

I should have known better.

As soon as my eyes started rolling in their REM cycles, I started dreaming.  My dreams are always very vivid and memorable and definitely in color and all that stuff.  I only say "all that stuff" because at some point in college I decided that I needed to learn everything about dreams (some theory about being able to control your dreams or something) and so I read a few books on the subject.  All I ever really learned was to purposely try and focus on the colors in your dream.  Like, if you're dreaming that you're walking down a street, look at the street sign and try to notice the color.  That will tell you if you dream in color (unusual) or black and white (more normal). 

Anyway.

I dreamed that my store was outside.  As in, just sort of out in a field, outside.  The t-stands and display tables and rolling racks were just sort of strewn about in the grass, and I couldn't figure out where anything was.  Customers would just kind of wander up and ask me if they could try on some jeans, or a dress, and not only would I not be able to locate whatever merchandise they were after, I also had no real option to offer as far as a dressing room.  "So, ummm, once I FIND the jeans, you can just kind of....err....go behind that blue truck over there to try on?  Would that be ok?"  Strangely, no one seemed terribly put off by this, but I couldn't ever find the denim, anyway.

After a while, I realized that the blue truck/dressing room was actually parked directly OVER all of my dresses.  The dresses were kind of strewn about, some crushed mercilessly under the dirty wheels of the truck, some haphazardly hanging over the tailgate.  After discovering a mostly empty keg of beer tipped over near the truck site and soaking several of the dresses in the grass, I decided that my store, well....it sucked.  A restaurant was trying to serve food in the space next to me; they kept climbing on my store fixtures and shelves, trying to erect various signs advertising their sandwiches.  I asked them nicely not to put their signs IN my store, as I was not selling sandwiches and felt that the customer might be confused.  They informed me that since it was Tuesday, they were ALLOWED to put signs up anywhere they wanted.  I sighed, immediately realizing that yes, it was Tuesday, and who was I to try and usurp the Tuesday-Sign-Hanging Rule?  I chased off a couple of stray dogs who were sniffing around the shoe table and trying to make off with a pair of particularly hard-to-reorder heels, and after an employee of mine came in to tell me she was quitting (grass allergy?  too much fresh air?) I started to cry.

I woke up, face imprinted with little chenille lines from the couch, heart pounding, impending sense of doom enveloping me, and looked around frantically.  Everything (of course) was as it should be.  Four walls, a closed and locked door, shelves, tables, racks - even the dresses were present and accounted for and not at all smelling of beer or gasoline.

Now all I have to do is make sure that the restaurant next to me doesn't try to hang any of their food-related signs over here, even if it IS Tuesday.  It'll just confuse the customer, you know?

Comments

[kyle]

yikes, dreams like that are the worst. only, in my case, dreaming about clothes doesn't happen. like, at all. in fact, purely dreaming about clothes, no matter the context of the dream, would be a nightmare.

i have two types of recurring dreams:
(1) i am late to a gig and am walking up on stage and trying to set up my equipment in front of everybody as the rest of the band is starting to play. then i never know the setlist.
(2) i am in college and somehow have neglected to go a certain class all semester long. then, the last week of classes, i freak out and wonder if i can still pass the class. actually, this was probably inspired by real life.

i also dream in color.

[wordgirl]

I don't know why but most of my nap dreams tend to be anxiety-ridden. Any hints as to why that is so?

[you may say that i'm a schemer]

When I dream, I do not dream in color. Instead, I dream of a world in which color does not define us, who we are, what job we have, what our credit scores are.

I believe Dr. King and I had that in common.

[talleyho]

only 5% of the population dreams in color.

[Teacher A]

Actually, most people nowdays report that they dream in color. I, for one, always dream in vivid color and have only met one person who dreams in black and white.

While I was looking for a statistic on what per cent of the population dreams in color, I ran across a very interesting article on the subject (http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm). Might be worth a look.

[janet]

I also HATE nap dreams! Totally ruins the nap.