Alex Peak

A:  My Earliest Dreams

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These are some of my earliest dreams.

Quick-Jump

The Motorcycle

I am about two years old when I have this dream, maybe younger.  I’m with my mother and her boyfriend.  They decide to get all three of us on the motorcycle and ride.  Because I’m the least important, I am the one who sits on the back.  My mother is in the middle, and her boyfriend is in the front.  Since there is no seatbelt, I immediately fall off as the motorcycle takes off.  My mother notices, and they come back to get me.  However, I am once again placed on the back, and once again fall off.  This time, no one comes to my rescue, and I have to sit there and watch as my mother drives off.  They get smaller and smaller, and I remain on the ground, alone.

The Job

I’m not positive this one is a dream or not, but since no one can seem to remember it happening, we can assume for now that it was a dream.  Again, I am around two, maybe younger.  My grandfather is heading to work (he worked in Machine Shop No. 2 at Bethlehem Steel), and decides to stop by at my mothers place, where I at that time lived.  I wanted to go with my grandfather to see where he worked, but as it was not a safe place for children, I was not allowed.  (I still believe this actually happened, although I can’t prove it one way or the other.)

The Man

On a few occasions, at least two, I dreamt of a man coming to get me.  I was two or three at the time, and the man wanted to take me away.  If I recall correctly, he wore a hat and coat, although I might just be confusing his style of dress with another, entirely unrelated memory.  In this dream, I’m living with my grandparents, which tells me this took place after the previous two dreams.  Luckily for me, my grandparents had an object that looked like some sort of stick, and whenever they got this object out, the bad man would go away.  They kept it in the drawer where they keep the candles.  Unfortunately for me, I was not tall enough to reach the drawer.  Ergo, when the man came, I needed my family to protect me.   The first few times I dreamt this, my family was there.  But the last time, they were not.  I had no alternative but to hide, and so I hid under the coffee table.  This, I knew, was not going to work, since the coffee table is small to begin with.  But, in my haste, I had made the fatal error of laying perpendicular to the table, rather than parallel to it.  It was, thus, all the more obvious that I would be captured.  However, I dared not move, for fear that by moving, I would attract even more attention to my location.  There was nothing I could do.

The Bees

I was probably three or four when I dreamed about the trailer in Ocean City, Maryland where we rented during vacation.  In the dream, I am walking down the sidewalk with my great grandmother, who is holding an umbrella.  Suddenly, a swarm of bees make a blanket around us and our umbrella.  We were trapped in a silo of bees.

The Birthday

I was somewhere between three and five when this dream occurred—I was probably four.  In the dream, my birthday was soon to arrive, and we therefore go to the party shop to make some purchases.  There, we see an odd object sitting on a table, an object that seemed ominous to me.  And, what do you know, we buy it.  When we pick the object up and leave, it leaves a cloud that rises to the ceiling.  The cloud was very ominous, and I knew that the people working there were in danger.  My family, however, was unaware.  We went home and had the party as scheduled.  The object was now sitting on a different table, and some kid at my party picks it up.  I see this not from my own first-person perspective, but from the third-person perspective, as though I were a camera in the corner of the room looking down upon this.  Again, a cloud rises to the ceiling as the object is lifted, and I knew therefore that something ominous was going to happen.  Indeed, I was quite scared.  Later, when it’s really late at night (likely midnight), I go downstairs into the kitchen and see my great-grandmother doing dishes.  I still knew something bad was going to happen, and this is when it does:  Suddenly, she gets sucked down the drain!  But, she’s fighting it; she finds it within her power to come back, out from the faucet.  Unfortunately, it then it sucks her back in again, and she’s gone forever….  I was petrified.

The Monsters

My family turns into monsters after some strange ritual.  I then have to protect myself from them.  Later, a girl is there with me, and we both have to fend off the monsters together.

The Pills

One night, when I was probably between four and six, I dreamed that I’d waken up in my bed to discover a woman and some children sitting in a circle of my floor.  They were, I knew or figured out, from Sesame Street.  Part of me wanted to get down off my bed and to join them, but I was quite shy at that age.  Furthermore, I reasoned to myself, “I can just lay here on my bed and watch this from here.”  I don’t have a bathroom in my bedroom in real life, but I did in my dream.  In the dream, it was in the far corner of the room, opposite from my bed.  More importantly, Big Bird went in there and got himself a cup of water.  When he came out, he came to me, and took me like a pill.

The Grandfather

I was probably between five and seven when I dreamed that my grandfather was both in the family room and in the dining room.  It struck me as odd that I would find him in two places at once, and concluded that one of them had to be my real grandfather, whereas the other had to be an imposture.  The imposture, I concluded, was evil.  But which one is the real one?

The Doors

This dream took place probably some time between age five and eight.  In this dream, I walk through the basement door to go outside, just to discover a bunch of people partying in my back yard that shouldn’t be there.  I go back through the door, to discover a place with which I was entirely unfamiliar—this was not my house.  I go through the door, and discover an exterior with which I was again unfamiliar.  I quickly discovered that each time I went through that door, it took me to a different place, one entirely foreign to me.

The Blueness

Perhaps between the ages of eight and ten, I had a dream in which the world was blue.  I recall walking past the back of Fullerton Elementary School and seeing everything in a shade of blue.

The Environment

Perhaps between the ages of eight and eleven, I recall dreaming that my former neighbour, Josh, had been elected president.  One of the reforms he had put in place was one that permitted, or encouraged, mass polluting.  People were polluting everything, as though pollution were positive.  I considered it all insane, and made impassioned pleas to everyone to stop polluting.  Stop purposely placing your trash in that little pond, stop throwing these boxes all over the place.  I don’t think my pleas were well-appreciated.  What strikes me today in remembering my dream is that my opposition to pollution was not based so much on reason as it was on morality.  I considered pollution to be a moral problem, not a health problem.  Pollution wasn’t so much bad as is was “wrong” and ungodly.

The Paintings

I’m guessing I was between ten and fourteen when I had my first reoccurring dream.  Each time I dreamed this, I went into the trailer that we used to stay at when going to Ocean City, Maryland.  Upon entering, I discover that the eyes are following me.  I freak out, and end up waking up.  The second night I have this, I make my way a little further into the place, but again get freaked out.  By the third time, I tell myself that it has to be a dream, and that therefore I shouldn’t get freaked out.  I confront my fears on that third night, and go further into the place, and remain there.  The dream ceased being scary, and it never reoccurred.

The Death

I may have been between fifteen and nineteen when I had a dream in which I died.  I had become a father, but shortly after died.  I then went to Heaven, and was able to watch my grandfather play with my son.  That brought tears to my eyes, feeling so happy to see my son playing and to see my grandfather so happy.  I was also saddened to know that I wouldn’t be able to raise him myself, but happy to get to witness my grandfather enjoying the privilege of doing so.  When I woke from that dream, I was crying.

The Zombie

Perhaps between the ages of sixteen and twenty, I had a dream in which my great-grandmother was feeling very cold and in horrible pain.  She couldn’t explain why she was so cold.  One day, she says to us, in a horribly low tone, “It struck me like a hurricane, I’m dead!”  She was feeling as cold as she had no pulse, and was feeling constant pain as a result of slowly decomposing.

THE GHOST

I was twenty-two or twenty-three when I dreamed I saw a ghost.  Someone told me there is a ghost in a specific location, and when I go to that location, I see it.  I can see it, yet also see through it; in other words, it was translucent.  Standing there, I felt so petrified.  I knew I had to make a decision at that point.  I had to decide either (A) that ghosts are real, (B) that I am simply seeing things that aren’t there, or (C) that I am insane.  The reality, I now know, is that I was dreaming, although that option had not presented itself to me that night; I was sure I was awake, and that it was one of those three above-mentioned options.