Dreams have always been a little more cohesive for me, and I’ve always seemed to remember dreams better than other people. I had three dreams of Bonnie Parker visiting me, sitting on my bed, petting Sam the Happy Hound on his head with one hand, and oh, by the way, holding  Browning Automatic Rifle  with the other. People always think that ghosts are really cool things, but the idea of seeing the dead, and the actuality of having someone you know is dead speaking to you, while well armed, is two totally different feelings, I assure you.  A Dead redhead on a bed with a machine gun does not lend itself to the word “Cool”. Try it.

I have a lot of third person dreams. They’re like movies where I watch people go through different parts of their lives. Last night I was having a dream that I was watching Tom Hanks playing a part in a movie. The movie was about a man who had married a rich woman (BEEP) who had an overbearing father. (BEEP) Tom Hanks’ character was suppose to get on a bus that the rich man (BEEP) had rented to take twenty or so family members on a tour of the United States (BEEP). All during the tour of different places the overbearing father-in-law was making life miserable for everyone by controlling where they eat, when they ate, where they stayed, (BEEP) and Hanks’ character had finally had enough of it. (BEEP) As the overbearing father-in-law tried to drag him back onto the bus, Hanks, pulled away and went inside a tiny diner, to talk to the waitress inside about a poem she had written. (BEEP) Hanks had discovered the poem writing waitress when they stopped for coffee, (BEEP) and he wanted to see how she ended the poem.

I fought through the fog of unconsciousness and realized the beep wasn’t internal, that it was in fact, external. Sharp, crisp, and loud, the beep was inside my house not inside my mind. BEEP! Dammit! The battery of the smoke detector has died. I look at the clock. Two in the morning? Maybe I can sleep through it. BEEP! Okay, I can’t, this is bad.

I have to get dressed and walk across the yard to get the ladder out of the shed. The mutts assume that I’m up for good, and they leap around me at the idea of play at this time of morning. I drag the ladder out, and as I’m walking back to the house both dogs go after something. I look towards the dogs, shine the flashlight towards them, and ram a tree with the ladder, knocking me down. At this point it occurs to me that if I fall off the ladder in the house, I will lay on the floor for quite some time before anyone realizes I’m down.

One back in the house, BEEP! I have to pull a tiny plastic pin out of the upper side of the smoke detector, Beep! Then I have to unhook the wiring, Beep! Once I get the damn thing down, beep, I then have to pry the trap door open. And in the process stick a piece of wire into my thumb, Beep! I have no fresh batteries, and as I’m holding the unplugged, and unpowered detector, the same thing goes BEEP!

HUH?

How is this thing making noise? No power means silence, doesn’t it? BEEP! I open the front door and fling it like a Frisbee into the black night. It ricochets off the front porch post and scatters into silence. It beeps nevermore.

After I get back to sleep the Tom Hanks dream returns, but I’m playing his part now. I get off the bus, the overbearing father-in-law grabs me by the arm, and tries to pull me back onto the bus. He’s an elderly man, so he can’t pull me back in, but he won’t let go of my arm either. I go back into the diner, overbearing father-in-law in tow, and all of a sudden I look at him, and he’s turned into some sort of misshapen monster. This is enough to get me kicking and screaming, which wakes me up.

It is now three thirty.

So now I feel as if I’ve spent most of the night either waking up, being woke up, or ramming trees, or being beeped at. But I do have a great idea for a movie, if I can get Tom Hanks to write me for more information.

Take Care,

Mike