To sleep, perchance to throw pillow grenades

Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist

People throughout the ages have made and lost fortunes and changed their lives and the lives of others by interpreting dreams — most notably Joseph, who in the book of Genesis dealt with his own and those of the Pharaoh.

They offer a variety of conclusions as to their meaning or lack thereof.

Some say we are merely re-living what happened to us the day before, or dealing with a situation we’re aware of only in our subconscious minds. Others contend that the dreaming mind is like a dog that has escaped from the house and is roaming around sniffing at things and exploring whatever he finds.

I don’t usually remember my dreams, or at least not their details. Usually, I just wake up, mutter, “What in the hell was that about?” then remind myself that I am, in fact, crazy, and roll over and go back to sleep.

During what began as a friendly romantic relationship and ended up as an adversary romantic relationship (unless you’ve had one yourself, there’s no explaining this concept to you), I dreamed that I was a soldier in a foxhole, throwing hand grenades.

When I woke up, both of my pillows were on the other side of the room. It didn’t take much to figure that one out.

I frequently dream about bowling or playing golf — or at least trying to. In the bowling dreams, there might be a row of sawhorses between me and the foul line, and in the golf dreams I’m standing with one foot in the tee box, and the other on top of a rock.

The golf dreams usually end when I come to a pond or a stream and find it filled with golf balls that other golfers have left there, and I start fishing them out. This makes no sense, because I have more golf balls than I’ll ever use, and I don’t even carry a ball retriever.

Snow is a regular feature of my dreams. I’m in my car, and I don’t get stuck in it or slide into a ditch because of it. I’m just driving through it. The most likely explanation is that I need to wake up and put on a blanket.

Another recurring dream had me in a hotel or some other building — once, it was Rosenbaum’s old department store — walking down an endless, winding set of stairs. Never have I reached the bottom.

One night, I got halfway down one flight before I stopped and said to myself, “I’m not doing this again,” then turned and walked back up. I’ve not had that dream again, apparently having settled some long-standing issue that I may never even know I had.

I may be chased by something I can’t see, or I may be chasing someone. Once, I was part of a resistance movement that was defending America from space aliens. I led them into an ambush that my buddies had set up, and we kicked their (whatever part of their bodies that space aliens sit on) in wonderful fashion. I woke up, told myself, “That was fun,” and went back to sleep to do it some more.

In another dream, my friends and I were crawling around on top of a cheese pizza that must have been 100 yards across, trying to to turn it into an atomic bomb.

I have no idea why it was a plain cheese pizza, without pepperoni, sausage or mushrooms, but the most likely explanation for the dream was simply the fact that I was hungry. I sometimes eat in my dreams, and I can taste the food.

For that matter, I dream in color, I can read, and my senses of hearing, smell and touch also work, and once when I saw myself in a full-length mirror, I appeared to be about 35 years old ... the age I usually seem to be when I’m dreaming, save for one exception.

On that night, I sat in a bar with Craig Haines and Jim Bosley, my two friends from Keyser High School who went alive to Vietnam, but came home in coffins. They were still young, but I had grown old.

After my father died, while I was still living in Cumberland, I dreamed of sitting on the side of my parents’ bed in their home when Dad walked in.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, and I told him it was a set of keys. “I’ll go and get it,” he said, then came back and put them down on a nightstand beside the bed. As he walked out, I asked him if I would see him again, and he replied, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

The next time I was in that house and was doing my laundry, I had the feeling of an unseen hand turning my head sharply to one side. It was then that I saw the keys, hanging in plain sight from a hook on the side of a cabinet, in an area of the basement where I had looked for them frequently over the previous six months.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve told that story, but once I stopped right in the middle of it, utterly dumbstruck by the sudden realization that the nightstand where my dad laid those keys was still in my apartment when I had that dream.

It wouldn’t be in my parents’ house until I moved there more than a year later and set it beside what used to be their bed — the bed in which I now sleep and dream of fabulous worlds that I can visit, but never fully comprehend.

When I did see my father again, I asked him, “How is everyone?” He got a look of surprised amusement that I’d seen before (my mother frequently inspired it), then smiled at me and nodded.

“We’re all fine,” he said, and I believed him. Dad has never told me anything that wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t the first time he’s told me something I needed to hear, and I doubt that it will be the last.

My mother, on the other hand, has always been a bit more direct than my dad.

When she has something to tell me, she doesn’t wait until I’m asleep ... but that’s a story for another time.