There are some truly great ideas which will likely never be a reality.
A final season of Reboot. A handheld universal translator that actually works. A roomba that feels love.
A device for capturing our dreams.
Oh man, that last one. How I would love that last one.
I’ve always had some pretty distinct, even lucid dreams—ones where you can actually exert some amount of control and influence. Like the time I deliberately turned from a dream of douchey drunks to a dream of FIGHTING WEREWOLVES HELLS YAH.
Sleep is poorly understood (much like chicken nuggets) although we’re pretty sure we can’t live without it (again, much like chicken nuggets). Dreams are also great fodder for first year psych papers, a limitless landscape of subtext and metaphor, and definitely not just a random cluster of neurons firing as the brain sings itself a lullaby.
Anyway, to add to the ongoing debate on *JERRY SEINFELD VOICE* “What’s the deal with dreams?” I thought it might be fun to share some of the wacky fun dreams I’ve had over the years, which I have kept track of, and offer my analysis on each.
Let’s do this.
The One About Foot Milk
Not literally milking feet, but still pretty odd. No, in this one I found myself back in grade school and my mom tells me she doesn’t have time to make lunch for me, so instead she just filled my backpack with milk.
Reasonable.
So I head to school with my milk bag, and sit down next to my best friend. The teacher interjects and says “Hey, space apart, it’s COVID.” So I head to a new seat. But I leave the milk bag beside my best friend.
When I go back for the milk at the end of class, I find my friend has opened it up and is resting his feet in it.
“My feet were hot,” he says, as he takes them out of my bag of milk and dries them off. Then, just as he leaves, he adds “Actually, I’m lying. I just wanted to make you drink my foot milk.’
ANALYSIS!
Apparently I think my best friend from grade school is a bizarre fetishist who has a desire to see me drink something he put his feet in. Also even in my dreams, I’m committed to obeying COVID guidelines. Not sure about the part with my mom, except that it totally tracks that after 15 years of packing lunches and such one day she’d just troll me by filling my bag with milk.
The One About A Flying Car
Not so much a full dream with a plot and stuff, but more just a great experience. In this one, I’m a superhero of some sort who has a remote-controlled, batmobile-style car (or maybe Knight Rider is a better comparison? I’m 35 and know Knight Rider. You do too, right? Best of all, it has a camouflage function. The disguise? A couch!
And that’s not all. The couch function has been damaged, so the couch sometimes changes between light purple and gingham.
Every now and then, as I’m hiding in my couch-car, the bad guys will look away, and when they look back, my couch is a new colour. “Huh,” they say, “I wasn’t suspicious of this couch in the middle of nowhere before…but wasn’t it a different colour a moment ago?”
ANALYSIS!
I’d be a pretty awful superhero, for one thing. Other than that, I think my brain clearly has a sense of humour about superhero tropes. Possibly I’m also really into the idea of a very comfy car? Admit it: if you could drive a motorized couch about town, you’d absolutely do it.
The One Where I Pull a Karen
In this happy sleepy-time jaunt, I am visiting my parents’ house in Calgary. I’m sitting there on the front lawn, hanging out with family, and we see this self-driving car go by (those are apparently a widely available thing now just go with it). Nobody is inside. It’s obviously going to pick someone up (obviously! Again, just go with it!)
The self-driving car collides with my neighbour’s car, parked in the driveway. Then it keeps on going.
Full of righteous indignation, I hop on my bicycle and pursue this empty, self-propelled vehicular menace.
And after an indescribable amount of time (because it’s a dream, after all) it finally pulls up, aaaaand… picks up a young Indigenous man wearing a full military dress uniform.
The man says he was visiting his family for the first time after 13 years of military service. He apologizes, admits to me that the self-driving car is needed because his war wounds are too severe for him to drive. He offers to pay for the damage.
I flee on my bike, half-mumbling, “don’t worry ‘bout it.”
ANALYSIS!
I obviously carry a lot of white guilt. Don’t need a rocket scientist for this one, folks.
For in that sleep of Ford, what next may come? I look forward to it.
Welcome to Ford on Fridays: a weekly column where Victoria Buzz staff writer Tim Ford offers his thoughts on life, love, and the pursuit of the perfect joke.
This column is for comedic purposes only. Please feel free to send feedback, thoughts, and [constructive] criticisms to tim@victoriabuzz.com.
