Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Dreaming is⦠weird. I know Iām hardly making a revolutionary statement when I say that products of your subconscious that tell odd disjointed stories most often without actual sound or colour are strange, but thereās really no other word for them.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā What I find particularly strange about dreams is how there seem to be so many different types, for me. There are good dreams and bad dreams, dreams about all kinds of different topics, dreams that are realistic and dreams that are way too weird to be taken as reality.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Perhaps most weird to me about my dreams is that I never have lucid dreams, where you know youāre dreaming and are able to control your dreams, but I do have dreams that influence reality or are influenced by reality pretty constantly. Some of my least favourite dreams are ones that make me move my body. Iāll be having a perfectly calm dream about jumping on a trampoline, but once I move to jump off the side of the trampoline, Iām suddenly awake with my legs jerking at the sudden āimpactā with the ground.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Sometimes my dreams like to interfere with sounds. I canāt tell you how many times Iāve had a dream about being in an airport and listening to the faraway sounds of a nice song on the radio, only to realize thatās my alarm playing my favourite song in an attempt to wake me up. Iāve tried changing my alarm so it instead plays a buzzer to wake me, but then I just have intense dreams about my favourite video game characters leaping into action while the buzzer notifies them of an emergency.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Thatās not to say Iām doomed to oversleep. Many scientists say the human body has a ābiologicalā clock, and I think itās this that has made me wake up from my dreams a few times. I remember a particularly fantastical dream about living in a hollowed out tree with my family, and a horde of giant bugs coming into the tree to attack us. I desperately tried to warn my mother, but she just rolled over in bed and told me, āDonāt worry. Itās almost time to wake up anyways.ā
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā I woke up five minutes before my alarm. I donāt really understand these dreams, because they arenāt exactly lucid ones, but yet everyone in my dream always knows when I need to wake up, and when I get to a lull in my dreamās story, someone inevitably says, āWell, this is a good place to leave off.ā
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā A type of dream I have pretty often feels like the opposite of lucid dreaming. Not really, though, as the opposite of lucid dreaming would likely be sleep paralysis, which is a very real and very creepy condition where people are trapped in nightmares and arenāt really able to move or wake up. Thankfully, I donāt have those, but I do have dreams that I think are reality for days after the dream, no matter how ridiculous the notion may be.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā I remember in Grade 9 I had a major math test. I was in an advanced placement class, so I was taking Grade 10 math already. Despite that, I felt I was decent enough at math, and even if the test was a hard one, I was confident Iād walk away with a score in the high 80s or low 90s.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā When I got the test back, it was a zero. I was horrified. I didnāt even know it was possible to get a score that low. Arenāt you supposed to get points for at least trying and showing some work?
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā I tried to hide the exam from my classmates, who always liked to compare their scores to mine as I was the stereotypical āsmart kidā in school. I was miserable the rest of the day. I didnāt even have an appetite for supper, and I had trouble sleeping.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā The next morning, I was getting ready in front of the mirror while my mother was applying makeup. I realized then that I hadnāt told her about my test grade. I knew Iād probably be grounded for a year, but I knew it was best to get this over with instead of letting my guilt build up inside of me.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā āMom?ā I choked out. āI have something to tell you.ā
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā I realized right at that moment that I, in fact, had nothing to tell her, because all of my memories of that horrible test score were actually from a dream I had last night.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Iāve also had dreams about missing the bus for a ski trip, winning a spelling bee, getting kicked out of a drama club, and other bizarrely normal things. And every time, I go on with life thinking thatās what actually happened to me for hours or even days before I recall the truth.
           One of the latest dreams I can remember, and the reason I wrote this article, is another one of these realistic dreams. In it, I remember getting up, getting ready for work, eating breakfast, driving all the way to the office, staring dully at my computer screen, and then getting ready to leave for work⦠only for my alarm to start buzzing and wake me up. I learned then that it is in fact very exhausting to pull yourself out of bed when you thought you had already lived out the whole Monday ahead of you.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā I still donāt know why I get tricked by my dreams so often. Perhaps Iām just a gullible person. Perhaps my dreams are just very vivid. Maybe my real life is the dream, and all my dreams are visions of the true life Iām supposed to be leading right now, and Iāll always be trapped in this fantasy world⦠and thatās probably too much of an existential crisis to have on a Monday morning when I havenāt had any caffeine.