Elephants, Hippos, Giraffes...Oh My!

When I was a child I must have had dreams, but I can honestly say that I don't remember almost any of them. I vividly recall nightmares (which were few, but memorable, usually involving amphibians and reptiles), but never my dreams. When I moved to the city as a 17 year-old things changed. All of a sudden I started to wake up with clear memories of the most startling and bizarre dreams imaginable. And after that, they've never really stopped.

I don't remember my dreams every night. And I still have nightmares sometimes. It's funny, my nightmares often are exactly the same ones I had as a small child, with a few home invasions thrown in. But my dreams, my dreams are completely impossible to predict.

Okay, perhaps not completely impossible. The number of dreams I've had of elephants means there's probably at least a 20% chance that my dreams will include at least one of these creatures. I've ridden elephants, watched dancing elephants, had elephants on my roof, and watched a baby elephant jumping on a trampoline who wanted me to take pictures and get him duplicates. Coincidentally, my mother also dreams about elephants. I have no idea why, and I'm not all that into dream analysis, so I just kind of go with it.

Not long ago I had a dream in which my dad and I were about to be eaten by a hippopotamus. We were floating in a river and there were little huts along the bank. Some small children saw our predicament and started calling to one another down the river and eventually help came to save us from the gaping maw of the hippo. Not sure what would have happened to us if no one had come to the rescue! And while there was some sense of impending doom, I wouldn't classify it as a nightmare. I didn't wake up in a sweat with my heart pounding.

I understand the myriad dreams that I've had that in some way indicate frustration. Often I've been racing around an arena completely unable to get to the judges stand on the other side. The competition is ready to begin and I'm the only one missing. These kinds of dreams make sense to me. They are predictable, normal, and while they sometimes put me in a bit of a panic, they are basically boring. But some of my dreams are just delightfully bizarre and make me wonder if nothing is impossible. I wake up bewildered. I wake up smiling. And sometimes I actually wake up laughing.

So whether my food or the furniture is talking or I find myself riding a giraffe in a purple fedora, I'm grateful for these dreams because in them there is a kind of freedom. In them all societal norms, all the laws of physics and biology are out the window and anything can happen. :)