nightmares

Vivid Nightmares, Puppet Master Edition

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I have always had very vivid dreams until lately when I think I have been so sleep deprived that my body doesn’t have time for that crap.

But the other night I had a real doozy, and I can’t seem to shake it. If you are not into creepy murder puppets, I suggest punching out now…this gets pretty gross.

So somehow I had befriended these puppets, right? I think I was hired to dust some dead lady’s house or something. And the puppets were all like “hey man, it is so not fair that they keep us locked in this room, you know?” And eventually I was like, “Yeah, that’s really not right to treat these guys that way!”

So I let them out of their room and the first thing they wanted to do was to kill these two people who had imprisoned them. I was a little uncomfortable with that, but I kind of thought, “Yeah, well okay. I mean I guess they’re pretty mad they had been wrongfully imprisoned, and who am I to say I wouldn’t feel the same way if I were them?”

So the puppets killed these people and then we all went back to their ancestral, underground homeland. They had these magical tunnels that connected to the ventilation systems of every building in the world. And they were so happy to be home! And there were suddenly, like, hundreds of them. Way more than I remembered releasing.

Now, it turns out these were some bad puppets. I mean these things made Puppet Master look like Sesame Street (except for Leech Lady because UUUUGH *nothing* could be worse than Leech Lady). Specifically I remember this one came down the aisle pushing this old fashioned pram that was like spraying blood out the sides like a sprinkler and all the puppets were just going nuts like this was the best, awesomest thing ever.

Right about then I realized that maybe I done goofed by letting these things out.

So there was this one puppet that looked like a sailor or something and I was asking her where all these other puppets came from and she was like “Oh yeah, we can like turn into regular people so we can pass and like get closer to our victims.” It turned out that each puppet had like a really specific type of person that they liked to kill (for her it was sailors). Then I realized this puppet on the other side of me that was all black with like a quilted, plain-white face (facial features, like a nose, but no like eyes or anything) was actually my co-worker Amy. And I was like, “Oh man, I never even knew you were a murder puppet! You’re so good at pretending! So who do you like to kill?” and she was like, “Feminists” and I was like, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

So then I was like, “You know what? These puppets really were my friends so, in for a penny, in for a pound: I’m just going to turn myself into a murder puppet too.” I had a vague notion that if I just ate what they were eating I could turn into a puppet, so I thought maybe I could get some of that blood that was spraying out of the pram. But then someone handed me a little paper plate with like some meat on it and they said it was a child. And I was like, “Man, I really don’t want to eat any children, but it looks like chicken and it’s in a nice vindaloo sauce, so really this is probably my best bet.” But I couldn’t quite bring myself to eat it, so I was just like carrying around the plate because I kept thinking I would get to it in a minute.

So this party was getting wilder and wilder and all the puppets were like disbursing into the ventilation systems to go out and spread murder into the world, and the puppets didn’t seem to mind that I was there, exactly, but some of them were getting a little TOO friendly, and that’s when it finally occurred to me that:

  1. All of the puppets that I knew were no longer in sight,
  2. It’s possible that they were never really my friends in the first place, but it was all a ploy to get me to let them out, and
  3. There very well could be a puppet who had a really specific type of person they wanted to kill, namely, me

Right about then the lights went out and I was sitting in the dark thinking about how this whole thing had really gotten away from me, and I hadn’t eaten any kids yet, so I wasn’t a puppet myself, and I probably doomed the world, and also there might very well be puppets crawling towards me in the dark right that very second…

And then I woke up.

And then the next day Amy knocked me out of the fantasy football playoffs in my work league SO SHE’S OBVIOUSLY A MONSTER AFTER ALL.

The end.

Now with less robots!

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Lately, Evie has been a little frightened at night time. Every time she mentions something like that, my heart really goes out to her. I wish she never had to be afraid of the dark. So lately her fear has been centered around robots.

See, all the doors in our house have like 6 panels in them. Evie decided a long time ago, that they kind of look like robots. The two smaller top panels kind of look like eyes. Evie has mentioned this for a long time, but only recently has she been afraid of them. And her room has not one but three of these doors, because the closet has two.

So this is where her brilliant daddy stepped in. I suggested we cover up those robots with old art projects. This killed two birds with one stone, because it used up some of these art projects. You kind of hate to throw them away, but what do you do with them? Well, you wallpaper your doors to hide the robots, obviously.

So the other day, I hung up around 30 pictures all over the doors. In addition to hiding the robots, it looks pretty good! (if I do say so myself) I hung them sort of randomly with all different mixtures of orientations, painting, markers, white paper vs. colored paper, etc. I almost wish I would have done it a long time ago, even without the robots. The room looks cheerier, and it is a good display place, over space that wouldn’t have been used by anything anyway. Plus, I don’t have a big stack of art projects sitting around anymore.

So, I guess if your kid has a problem with robots in their room, I would recommend hiding the robots with art. And if all else fails, there’s always robot insurance.

To sleep, perchance to dream

/ Shane / 6 Comments

One night Evie was crying in her sleep. I went to see what was the matter and she explained to me that, while she was lying in her crib, a frog was trying to eat her legs. I explained to her about dreams and she went back to bed, but this dream stuck with her for several days, until we had to have a lengthy discussion about good dreams and bad dreams, and why bad dreams couldn’t hurt you.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a horrifying dream to me, even as an adult. There’s something particularly creepy about it being a giant frog, I can totally picture it. I’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth.

The fact is, I have very vivid dreams that I almost always remember on a nightly basis. When I was a kid, I was deathly afraid of the dark. I would lie awake nearly every single night with the sheet pulled up to my eyes, getting carried away by my very vivid imagination. Naturally, I would rather Evie was spared from that.

The other day she told me about a dream she had. She was flying down a long hallway, like a bat, while “something with no mouth and no feet” walks behind her. Creepy to the max. On one hand I am proud that she has such a vivid imagination. I think that will serve her well in life.

I’m sure every kid has nightmares. It’s probably not a big deal. Anybody else have any experience with this? How old were your kids when they started having nightmares, and when did they grow out of it?