Dreams

I don't know how others can differenciate and justify to themselves what seperates their dreams from other memories or experiences. For me at least, the line between all these types of concepts becomes more blurred because of how I perceive (or'd think I'd perceive)how others might see or react to what I would have/have had to convey as such. When I was 5 our family moved to a town in NJ called Denville. By then, there were 6 of us (15 years later 7). (Two boys and two girls--I being the oldest.) No sooner that we moved-in, I had had my first official nightmare. I dreamt I was being chased by a skeleton through this new dwelling (actually an apartment above a car-parts store called J-Rods). I remember running through all the rooms to only end up finally finding a hiding-spot under a radiator in the bathroom. The skeleton was reaching under to snatch me, and I remember seeing that scary, cartoon-like face--bearing an evil, sharp-toothed grin. Of course, I woke-up screaming, and my Mom came in to comfort me. I scared the "you-know-what' out of my little brother, too. My father came in soon afterwards. He had a more 'hard-ass' approach to matters, and when I got done sobbingly-explaining my nightmare my father had had the great idea that I should 'face my fear' and go the bathroom--to get a dose of reality. In a way I had little choice, being I had had to take a 'wicked pee' and possibly puke. We all went to the bathroom (my brother, the curious-troublemaker, followed) and all bend down at once to give a look. (Nothing but balls of dust) I reluctantly used the john, which (just my luck) was next to the bowl. I tried not to dangle my feet in front of the radiator, for fear of being pulled-into the opening of hell. It made sense to me, because it: had had no cover, rocked and jumped when the steam screamed out, and was burning-hot to the touch. (We already knew this because, during the winter, we would stick our rear ends close to it to get warmed-up only to inevitably get too close (or would be pushed against it while we all were scrambling for the closest position) and bet burned. The combination of the memory of the nightmare and the events afterwards with my family solidified in my mind then (and now) that I indeed had had a dream. It's as vivid in my 55-year-old head as it was 50 years ago. However, there were other dreams before that that I wasn't then (and even now) sure about as far as the same certainty of my first nightmare. Repressed, those memories didn't surface until later, and the synchronicity of my life started to reveal itself.