Lucid Dreaming

For a while now, I’ve been interested in lucid dreaming. Honestly, I haven’t done it too much; I try to do what I can whenever I get around to remembering. I’ve been at it since sometime in senior year. I made a movie about a lucid dream for my film class (which was mostly remarkable for the first film appearance of former NGW World Champion and master freestyle rapper Scottywood spitting some sick rhymes). I’m not great at lucid dreaming yet, but here’s what I’ve done and how I’ve done it.

One of the first things I heard about lucid dreaming is that you should perform “reality checks” throughout your day at times when you think you might be dreaming. A reality check involves looking at a digital watch or a line of text you carry everywhere for a couple of seconds, studying it, looking away for a couple seconds, and looking back. In a dream, the text will change and the watch won’t work (neither will any electronic equipment).

So one morning, I got out of bed and looked at my digital watch, looked away, and looked back. When I looked back, I saw that there were words on my watch. Excitedly, I looked away and looked back again and it said something different. I realized I was lucid dreaming (In my movie, the main character realized something was wrong when he was sitting in the woods holding a backwards clock; in real life, it’s just a cool backwards clock).

At this point, I was ecstatic. I ran out of my room down the stairs into the foyer, exactly as it is in real life. I stopped in the middle of the room and decided I would try to fly. I focused all my energy and started flapping my arms and jumping in the air, but I couldn’t do anything other than hover a couple inches off the ground for a second or two at a time a’la David Blaine (this is also in my movie).

After not really being able to much in the way of flying, I told myself that I could go wherever and do whatever I wanted in the entire world so why waste my time in my foyer trying to fly when I could barely get off the ground. I decided to go to my school and punch my old Spanish teacher Ms. Mubarek in the face. (Incidentally, Ms. Mubarek’s first name is Georgie and she bares a striking resemblance to our first President; unfortunately, she would not agree to be punched in the face for my movie, though I may punch her in the face and film it one of these days for the Director’s Cut). So anyway, with my new goal, I ran out the front door and down the path into my driveway.

However, when I reached the driveway, I realized that the Jeep I drove was not where I usually parked it. “Oh no!” I thought. “I’m lucid dreaming and I can go wherever I want, but I don’t have a car!” Honest to God, this is what I thought. Now how would I punch Ms. Mubarek in the face? (By the way, as she most hilariously pointed out at some school function, Ms. Mubarek is not related to Egyptian President Hosni; I got in a nice loud cough after that line.) So I walked back into the front yard kind of depressed wondering what I should do next (the main character in my movie also is disappointed to find no car in his garage though I forgot to film a line so it is tacked on with little or no explanation; and in case you were wondering, yes I am a hack who hasn’t come up with an original idea in his entire life).

So anyway, as I walked back into the front yard, I saw two people walking towards me out of the woods. One was a Storm Trooper from Star Wars and the other was Spiderman. “Oh great,” I thought, “I’m having my first lucid dream, I don’t have a car, and now I have to deal with this Storm Trooper and Spiderman.” Luckily, I quickly threw both of them to the ground and thought the issue was settled. However, when I looked up, I saw dozens of Storm Troopers and Spidermen swarming out of the woods. Frustrated, I made myself grow to about ten feet and starting punting the Spidermen and Storm Troopers around. But as I looked closer, I saw that they were just little kids wearing Storm Trooper and Spiderman Halloween costumes. And here I was, ten feet tall, punting around a bunch of little kids. So my psyche must have been so ashamed I woke myself up.

So anyway, that’s the sad story of my first lucid dream. Not long after that, I had another one, but wasted it flying around my mom trying to convince her I was having a lucid dream as she was folding laundry in her room. I was really flying, so that was pretty cool, but because I was so insistent on proving my point, I stayed indoors, which kind of took some of the fun out of it.

I had my third lucid dream after using another technique. If you wake up in the middle of the night after having a dream, go back to sleep telling yourself “I was just dreaming and I’m about to dream again” and you’ll be aware of the situation. A little later that night, I found myself in another dream. I had a ham sandwich on a wicker nightstand somewhere that vaguely resembled my house. Scottywood (“The Perfect One”) reached for my sandwich. At this point, I simultaneously realized I was dreaming and became very defensive about my sandwich. I beat Scottywood to a pulp. He grabbed the plate, I grabbed his head and just started punching him. He fell to one knee and I just kept wailing away at him, even when he fell on the ground. Just pounding on him for a couple seconds until I woke up.

Badoom.