Childhood Dreams

[tillystar]

As well as childhood fears did you have any childhood dreams that you particularly remember?

My brother and I had the great plan that we would run a sweet shop together and lie above it. We would take turns working in the shop while the other one was upstairs eating sweets.

I can picture that shop so cearly, with its rows and rows of sweets in jars and the stairs up to our flat above in the corner with a bell to get each other's attention.

I also dreamt later on that I would write the world's best children's book ever on a par with Peter Pan and The Hobbit (my favorites) and be so famous and children everywhere would be amazed with my tales. I think JK Rowling got me there!

[Deleted]

I had a recurring nightmare when I was little. It didn't happen too often, thank god, because I would wake up in total panic and be so afraid of going back to sleep that I would get up and sit in the bathroom with the light on for up to an hour.

When I would try to tell my parents, they didn't believe that a small child could dream such a thing and just ignored my anxiety.

The dream was basically.... nothing. I would find myself in an absolute gray place (whereas I always had normal dreams with vivid colors) which just represented infinite nothingness. There were gray columns that would go up to infinity, and there was an imprecise distance that I could see which was also... infinite.

And I was all alone in that place without another soul in the universe.

Kind of scary when you are six or seven years old.

And I know exactly what put the concept in my mind -- the evil nuns at school. They were always insisting on the fact that one would go to heaven or hell "for ever and ever" without any possibility of it ever coming to an end. Try as I might, I would of course attempt to imagine heaven, but it was always represented as a cloudy, foggy place with people walking around with wings and harps and absolutely nothing else in those days. There was no TV, no sofa to sit on, no playground swings, no loving parents -- the idea absolutely scared the shit out of me.

Since you could do "anything" in heaven, I would try to imagine visiting the planets of the universe (quite a difficult thing to imagine at age 7) and things like that, and I would come to the conclusion that it would be okay for 100 or 500 years or so, but that this "forever-and-ever" business meant that I would be there for 100,000 or a million years or even worse -- "forever."

In my waking hours, this was already upsetting, and I am positive that it is what caused those nightmares.

[rikita]

if you mean dreams as in wishes and plans - i wanted to be a writer and write books that amaze everyone too... i read a lot of astrid lindgren, so i always wrote stories in which the kids were named lasse and bosse and so on... when i was older (from age 12) i was very interested in the books about street children and working children in south america so i always dreamt of going there and helping them and of writing a book or a song about poor children that is so heartbreaking that people will finally realise how unfair the world is and will automatically start changing their life and all will be good...

i also dreamt of having a sailing boat and traveling the world with it. and of having a horse. i spent hours and hours trying to think up ways of how to combine the two (not really an easy task - as long as i would sail along the coast i could have breaks from sailing and let the horse run a bit, every day - but what if i wanted to cross an ocean?)

and in general, i dreamt of becoming famous and widely admired and that all the kids that were mean to me would feel so sorry for ever having said anything bad to me...




as for dreams as in what one dreams at night... i remember my first concious nightmare when i was four or five or something like that was me lying on a sofa, and underneath some of hte blue monsters from sesame street were dancing in small versions and i was very scared that my hand or foot might slip down from the sofa as then they might eat it...

when i was already a few years older i once dreamt getting shot (there was a thief in our neighbours garden, carrying a big bag on his back that was moving, and i knew he had our neighbours chicken in there, and when i ran away to tell my parents he shot me) and waking up with the feeling of that shot still in my back...

when i was ten or twelve i once dreamt that i had a wish granted by God or something, not sure anymore, and i wished i would die, so i would know what it is like and what would follow. then i was suddenly lying in an empty room on a large stone thing, with candles by my head and feet, and felt that i am dying. and got scared so just before i was gone i took all my remaining strength to shout out that no, i take it back, i don't want to die yet.

[tillystar]

Oh yes, I did means hopes but for dreams I used to have a great one that came back often.

My grandma had a TV in her bedroom and when I stayed I used to sleep in her bed and we would sit up and watch TV which was amazing as we didn't watch it at home. I used to fall asleep and dream that there was a little door in the cabinet underneath the TV and it went to another world, a bit like Alice in Wonderland with all sorts of adventures and characters.

A couple of times I had to double check that there wasn't a little door under there when I woke up.

[Deleted]

In my dreams I sometimes found a secret door leading to an immense attic room that nobody knew about and it had about 50 televison sets in it, all turned on. It was magical.

[BigIain]

When I was young I wanted to be one of The Goodies!! I think that Bill Oddie was the one I was all set to replace.

[Deleted]

I spent a lot of time alone in the woods and on the beach growing up and felt very safe and secure at those times communing with nature. I fancied myself as a princess of the woodlands and water. No one bothered me and I was quite content. I dreamt of never having to have to go back" home".

[bixaorellana]

Kerouac's reply #1 reminded me of a strange coincidence. I have always loved and identified with Little Lulu comic books. One of my favorites when I was little had Lulu sitting in her rocking chair in "nothing", very much the way Kerouac describes it, except that it wasn't scary. I was fascinated by this and spent time trying to imagine it fully.

I guess "Marge", who wrote Little Lulu died, because after a brief stint of Lulu and Tubby comics that illustrated moral and social responsibility issues , the comics were no longer to be found in the US. However, translated versions of the great old classic Lulus still existed in Mexico.

My boss and his girlfriend went on vacation to Mexico and asked what could they bring back for me. I told them I wanted a Little Lulu comic book. When they returned, she handed me the comic and apologized, saying she only found one. You all know which one it was!

[Deleted]

When I was little, I knew that I would be an adult some day and have my own house. I kept wondering if there was some way to get my parents to move out of the house so that I could have it.

[bixaorellana]

This is a really interesting thread, especially since it shows small children grappling with big issues.

I can remember the kinds of dreams where I'd find chests of gold coins or something and for a couple of seconds after waking up, would think the dream was real. I guess when kids dream that kind of thing, the images must have come from a movie or story book.

But I can also remember having some intense nightmares. One in particular must have happened when I was four or five, because I know it was when we were living in Alaska. As I was writing this, I realized I could probably retrieve the details if I concentrated, then realized I didn't want to!

[komsomol]

Quicksand. Nightmares full of quicksand. Never deeper than my knees but impossible to get out.