About Dreams

I’ve often read that everybody dreams each night. I don’t remember most of mine, which is a blessing. Usually the only time I remember dreams is when acid reflux or my bladder awakens me during the night. This is a good thing, because the dreams I remember are always replays of the worst moments of my life. Do I dream about the good things in life? As far as I can tell, never, but that may be because the dreams I do remember are always preceded by spicy food or one too many glasses of wine.

Anyway, my dreams are a replay of mistakes I’ve made, things I said I wish I wouldn’t have, and various machinery disasters involving fires, blown engines, and me backing into my son’s new car in our driveway. The latter dream includes the sound of the backup alarm going off, which I ignored in real life but the replay of that annoying sound always wakes me up in the middle of the night.

Last night’s dream was about a trip Julie and I took to the annual gala put on by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. American Enterprise is a think tank which at that time published a magazine I wrote for. I’d write a thousand words every other month, and they’d pay me $150. They’d also send me two tickets to the banquet, which were selling for $1500 a pop. Julie and I went several times, and once I took Ben.

So, on the night they were honoring George Will, Julie and I made arrangements to go. The banquet was always at the end of harvest, so we didn’t spend much time thinking about the event. Step off the combine, head to the airport, and when we got to the Washington Hilton, where the dinner, speech by the honoree, and dance took place, we’d unpack my rented tuxedo and head to the party.

When I opened the box from a local sporting goods store and tuxedo rental place, I realized that instead of a dinner jacket, I had the sort of cutaway jacket with long tails worn by Fred Astaire in any number of dance scenes. 500 hundred black dinner jackets, and one guy looking for Ginger Rogers. I’ve been embarrassed before, but never in front of George Will, P.J. O’Rourke, Jonah Goldberg, and other luminaries of what used to be the conservative pantheon. It was awful. We immediately found our table and sat down, tucking my tails as unobtrusively as possible under my chair. Nobody mentioned my outfit. Julie, who looked stunning in her long black dress with shiny things on it, kept a straight face throughout, although I imagine she had to stifle at least one giggle or two. We danced the night away, but I took my jacket off, affecting the manner of someone who danced so energetically that he was sweating though his ruffled white shirt.

I don’t think dreams appear in novels or movies as often as they used to. I assume this is a benefit of Freud losing his reputation. I can remember books where the hero would recount his dreams, and readers were supposed to draw conclusions from the symbolism contained in the dream. I would always skip those sections, being lousy at spotting symbolism, wherever it might appear.

I don’t attach any symbolism to my dreams of disaster, but rather am dismayed by how many there are and how often I add to my repertoire. My mother, 90, is suffering from some of the mental infirmities of old age, including the loss of any filter on what she says. I walked in the other morning for my daily visit, and she said: “you got fat!” If I ate less, I’d probably look better to Mom and sleep better at night, and I wouldn’t remember my dreams. That’s about all I’ve gained from this venture into thinking about dreams. Oh, one more thing. Don’t rent your formal wear in the same place you buy your golf balls