Have you had a dream?

Hi neighbors. Do you dream in black and white or in color? I remember the first time I heard that question as a child. For a second I couldn't remember! Then, by trying to reconstruct the last dream I had, I decided sometimes I dream in color and some- times not.

Dreams have always fascinated me. With all the thinking that goes on, you would assume the brain sleeps just like the body does. But it doesn't. The brain never stops thinking.

Now I realize for some of you teachers out there, there are good examples of people supposedly not thinking at all -- just looking like they are lost in space.

Maybe even day-dreaming is a type of "dream" because your consciousness is turned inward. Kind of like an aerobic, creative version of sleep dreaming.

Since the human race began, people have been having their nights decorated with dreams. I wonder if the idea of motion pictures came from someone wanting to share outwardly the same kind of inner "movies" they had in their dreams.

As soon as the first person had nerve enough to share the fact that they had a dream, someone else was there to tell them what it meant. As time went on and more and more dreams were talked about, there was more opportunity to compare dreams to actual daily events.

Eventually, people found some parts of dreams were pretty commonplace and occurred to many people in one form or another. As time passed, it became obvious that certain images seemed to occur in various people's dreams.

Why would different people share the same dream symbols? Well, as my superstitious mother would say, it's because dreams are "signs" of things to come. My mother wasn't alone on this theory. As a matter of fact, the idea that dreaming of certain things foretold future events is a very ancient one. Dreams you remembered were much like warnings from God or angels, to help you, or to chastise you for doing wrong.

After printing became common, books about dreams were popular. Most spoke as much about morals as dreams, but all were written with the idea that items in dreams portend good or evil events in a person's life.

For instance, in one book called "10,000 Dreams Interpreted," the first entry is "Abandon."

There are many explanations for dreaming about being abandoned, or of abandoning someone or something else.

For instance...according to this book, to dream of abandoning a sweetheart means "you will fail to recover lost valuables and friends will turn aside from your favors." Hummm. Think twice about that! On the other hand if you have been misbehaving there will be rewards if you dream of abandoning someone society frowns upon. "If you abandon a mistress, you will unexpectedly come into a goodly inheritance." Well, there you go!

Women have to be careful what they dream of to. Apparently lizards aren't too popular for men or women to dream about. "To dream of lizards," says this book, "foretells attacks upon you by enemies. If you kill a lizard, you will regain you lost reputation or fortune; but if it escapes, you will meet vexations and crosses in love and business." No one likes lizards I guess.

Women beware!

"For a woman to dream that a lizard crawls up her skirt, or scratches her, she will have much misfortune and sorrow. Her husband will be a victim to invalidism and she will be left a widow, and little sustenance will be eked out by her own labors." Wow! Pretty powerful lizard! Have you ever dreamed of a lizard doing anything? Do you know anyone who has? I don't.

While most of these books indicated a person (or some being outside of the person) had control over their dreams, other proponents of dream interpretation indicated that dreams were products of the mind alone. Dreams were the brain trying to rid itself of daily trivia and had nothing to do with the future.

Freud, on the other hand, felt many dreams contained "symbol" of things that we didn't want to remember, or that society didn't allow us to think about without a guilty conscious.

Some people claim to be able to mix day dreams and real dreams and become actively creative when sleeping and dreaming. This type of "wow, I'm having a dream and here I am in it!" is called a "lucid" dream. That might be better than a 3-D movie --or not. Some dreams are best forgotten.

Until the next time friends remember following your dreams doesn't always make sense, particularly if dreaming of abandoning lizards. Maybe we should follow our conscious decisions and let sleeping dreams lie.