Thirty-four years ago, I finally understood this dream. One night I was placing my sleeping first born into her crib, when she slipped out of my arms and fell the last four inches. She did not awaken and my green dream popped into my mind and I understood. My father had the habit of tossing me (as an infant) into the air and catching me as I came down. The feeling of negative gravity became associated with falling. I never liked him (or anyone) tossing me up because I hated the falling feeling. To this day, I do not like roller-coaster-like rides because the falling-feeling fills me with fear.
This next dream is gross but perhaps is an early indication of my sexual orientation. It only occurred between five and ten times when I was between three and four years old; and before I received a traumatic spanking for exploring my penis. First, a little set up. In June of 1951, my mother and a friend took me to visit my grandparents’ farm in central Minnesota to attend their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We were there for some time as I have photographs of me with my third birthday cake taken on the ninth of June. Their anniversary was not until the twenty-fifth. There was no indoor plumbing at that time, so I learned how to use the outhouse, which seems to provide the framework for my subconscious imagination to dream about.
In my dream, I am inside the outhouse, down in the pit looking up at other people’s butts and penises. The pit was clean. In a companion daydream, I would imagine being swallowed by a giant and pissed out his penis.
I have no explanation for these dreams. At this age, I had not discovered the pleasures in manipulating my penis or the difference between males and females. I did not even understand the significance of the words “boys” and “girls.” I do know that when potty training was in progress at age two, I really gave my mother “fits.” So, perhaps I was still interested in body functions at that stage, but I really don't know.
Around twelve years old, I began to have dreams of flying. This is no mystery to me as I had recently rediscovered my childhood large, illustrated, Disney version book of Peter Pan. When Disneyland first opened, my parents took me there; I was probably seven. Of all the rides and sites to see, the Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland rides were my favorite. So, I rediscovered the book and at the same time, I was telling myself that I never wanted to grow up; I suppose my dreams of flying began there.
In my flying dream, I could only fly if I held in one hand, a handful of the dreaded #2 pencils. I could escape from anyone trying to catch me. I would also “show off” to my schoolmates. Over the course of several such dreams, (they were serial in nature) I gave in to my friends and schoolmates’ requests to have a pencil so they could fly also. One by one over several dream episodes, I gave away my pencils. Every time I gave a pencil away, it became harder and harder for me to fly, while everyone else could fly perfectly well with only one pencil. When I finally gave away all but one pencil, I was grounded and the dreams stopped. I guess it was no longer enjoyable.
A similar dream began after I joined the Boy Scouts (at age 13) and could not advance in rank until I could pass my First Class swimming requirement. In this case, I began to dream that I could breathe underwater. This dream also stopped when I finally passed the requirement one-year later.
I also had at least one scary dream that would repeat somewhat regularly and exactly. In this dream, I was scared because I was being chased by a huge T-Rex. Eventually, I would reach a large three-storied building, which appeared to be around 100 yards long. (It resembled a long corridor of rooms like in a hotel, but that is all it was, just a corridor, no hotel.) I would enter the ground floor at the left end of the building just ahead of the T-Rex. I was afraid he could see and get me, if I stayed on the bottom floor, so I went up the stairs and started running down the corridor towards the other end. Inside, I could see that the corridor is lined with rooms with no doors. As I ran down the corridor I looked to the left out the rooms’ window and the T-Rex’s head would be there and his right eye was watching me as he ran parallel to me on the outside of the building. To gain some distance from him, I decided to go down the stairs located midway between the building’s ends, knowing that the T-Rex would have to go around the building to resume the chase. As I exited the building, I saw my mother and little brother and sister standing there. I made them follow me but they could not run fast enough so I found a “hollowed out” large tree stump and we all crawled in and waited. Shortly, the T-Rex arrived but could not detect us and went away and the dream ended.
Sometimes, I would wake up early in the dream, breathing hard. At first I would just lie down again and go back to sleep. But, after three episodes where I just went back into the same dream at the same place I left it, I would get up and get a drink, etc. before I went back to sleep to insure that the dream was gone.
After leaving home for the Air Force in 1967, I began to have home-sick adventure dreams. These dreams revolved around the geographical area of my home at South Lake Tahoe. In these dreams, I was in control of where I went but not all the details of whom, (or what) I would meet or whether or not they were hostile. If I went west, I would end up in a cavern with a secret entrance to an old mansion. If I went east, I would go to the desert area east of Carson City and have a mine adventure. To the south, there was just forest and no real activity so I did not go there too often. Eventually, I got over being homesick and the dreams ended.
While in high school, I had several dreams with a sexual theme. All were within different school designs, but all the settings were in boys’ locker rooms. In some dreams, a few boys were already engaged in sexual activity. In other dreams, no one was. But in all of those dreams, the object of my desire was available and willing but at the crucial moment just before consummation of desires could begin, my mother would walk in; what a mood killer. That is when the dream abruptly ended. Could I just close my eyes and re-enter the dream as I did with the T-Rex one? Nooooo! I was very frustrated as a teen.
When I was 63 years old, I finally figured out why my mother was always showing up at the wrong time in that dream. When I was five, I received a spanking (a very traumatic one for me) for examining my penis. My mother was the one who caught me at it and immediately told my father who rushed in and spanked me. Therefore, in the dream my subconscious was stopping me from doing something that I had been punished for doing.
I did not remember the sexual dreams until forty or more years after they stopped. Clearly, I should have recognized the implications of these dreams, but I was so naïve that it just did not register.
© 1 May
2011
About the Author
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| Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA |
When united with his mother and new stepfather, he lived at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After two tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children. His wife passed away from complications of breast cancer four days after 9-11.
He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. "I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic.”
Ricky's story blog is "TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com".
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