Every Weird Detail I Could Remember After My Wife Woke Me From Screaming In My Sleep

SNL, DVRs, Greek food, and Tusken Raiders

It was around 2 am, and my wife was shaking me.

“Are you okay? You were screaming.”

I laughed. I was in the middle of a terribly exciting dream where my home was being invaded. And although I was scared, this was the moment in the dream where I was beginning to fight back. I was unleashing a mighty battle cry. Against a Tusken Raider.

Now, it’s important to have the right visual in mind for this. If you aren’t familiar with Star Wars’ Tusken Raiders — also called sand people — watch this video, and make sure your sound is on. The whole clip is just 10 seconds, but I feel like the final 2 seconds really capture the essence of what I was dealing with.

And so, it was unclear to me if my real-life screaming was representative of me yelling because I was mounting my home-defending assault or the telltale whooping of the Tusken Raiders. I like to believe it was the latter, and my wife laughingly agrees.

Being woken up was a gift, though, because I remembered a whole lot of crazy things that led up to that moment, and I wrote it all down because of how ridiculous it all was. Please join me in this brief tour of my subconscious.

The earliest part of what I can recall begins with the musical act on an episode of Saturday Night Live. It was The Chicks, and I was curious to see what they’d play.

Of course, they played Goodbye Earl. Of course.

I rolled my eyes but then admitted to myself, Okay—it's actually a pretty fun song.

Suddenly, the music stops. And it’s silent. Like, really silent. The performers look at each other and attempt to find their place in the song and resume. It was clumsy, and there seemed to be a lot of confusion.

Before they’re able to fully recover, a black woman enters the stage with a microphone, and she’s speaking, but we can’t understand her. I don’t know who she is, but it’s SNL, so I know she must be someone famous.

She’s speaking, but we can’t understand her because of what seems like technical difficulties. She’s joined on stage by a black man in a suit — who I also don’t recognize — and then a third person. The third is a person who I actually know, though: Lionel Richie.

This was an a-ha moment for my dream self because, in the previous week of this dream world, SNL had made a big mistake of trying to do a racial or cultural awareness event with all white people — and it was presumably disgraceful.

They begin to sing as they’re joined by more celebrities like Keegan-Michael Key and Tracee Ellis Ross. The dream cuts to a high-angle shot. People are running in from all sides like a Super Bowl halftime show, forming a giant picture, but it’s just a rectangle with everybody bent at the waist with shoulders interlocked, like a basketball team doing their pre-game ritual.

And what song are they singing for this We Are The World-esque moment?

Why it’s Shout by Tears for Fears. My brain’s anthem for change. Not what I would’ve expected. An interesting choice by my subconscious.

The scene ends with the camera panning over to Molly Shannon lying on the floor in a cocktail dress, exhausted by this emotional moment, and we fade to black.

The dream shifts its focus to me. I’m in the kitchen with my wife, and I leave to join my mother-in-law in the living room. She’s watching a recording of the Detroit Tigers baseball game from the night before.

I’m pretty sure there’s a live game on now, I think to myself.

I check my phone. Confirmed. Why would we watch a recorded game when there’s a live one happening now?

I let her know there’s a live game, but she continues with the recording. The recorded game goes to a commercial break, and she fast-forwards to skip.

I think to myself, Fair point — this is a clear advantage to watching the recorded game. End scene.

Now, my wife and I are in the living room, and she just had some Greek food delivered. It came in one of those flip-top styrofoam containers and looked like chow mein, but it was Greek food.

“Where’s this from?” I ask.

“The place run by sand people.”

“Ah, nice.”

That’s when we hear a noise coming from the kitchen. We exchange what the hell was that glance, and I go to investigate.

Shit. It was one of the Tusken Raiders.

I hug my back against the wall and hope it didn’t see me. I poke my head around the corner. It has a blaster, and — pew — it shoots at me!

I run back toward my wife and look for anything I might be able to use as a weapon. There’s a severed golden C3PO head lying on the floor. I pick it up and wait for the invader to reveal itself as it chases me around the corner.

It’s whooping as it enters the room, but it has transformed to look almost like it was wearing a C3PO costume itself, gold and shiny from head to toe. In terror, I launch the robot head at it. It hits it, square in the middle of its chest, but it has no effect.

I don’t know what happens next. That’s the moment my wife woke me.

There’s a lot to unpack with this. Let’s try to connect some dots.

SNL I’ve watched SNL since I was a kid.

The Chicks I’m not a big Dixie Chicks fan — or at least I didn’t know I was — and I’m glad they decided to re-brand for the right reasons, but I don’t love “The Chicks.” I can recall having this sentiment in the dream, too, upon learning that they were the musical guest.

The black celebrities media event I recently read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and I’ve been trying to reconcile what to do with the perspective I’ve gained from it. I am the Dreamer in his book, the white kid in the suburbs with the football cards. I live in a house on the mountain. I acknowledge my racism and privilege, and I’m not trying to make any claim about my goodness or badness here; I’m just saying that there’s a lot that I’m trying to process. Coates’s book is very good, and I suggest you read it. I’m currently reading his novel, The Water Dancer, and enjoying that, too.

I admit, I’m a little embarrassed with what my brain came up with here, but it felt like an important part of the dream to share.

Molly Shannon She’s front-of-mind due to her role in HBO’s The White Lotus.

My mother-in-law and the DVR My in-laws have some DVR habits that I don’t get, like DVRing the nightly news. There are advantages, though, like being able to fast forward through commercials, as my dream self thoughtfully recalled.

Greek food I live in southeast Michigan, where Coney Island restaurants are very popular. Coney Islands are kind of like Denny’s but with Greek food and hot dogs.

Chow mein My wife likes chow mein, and the place we get Chinese takeout from serves it in those flip-top styrofoam containers.

Tusken Raiders? C3PO? Yea, I dunno. I like Star Wars.

So, there you have it. That was the dream that had me screaming — or whooping — in my sleep. I don’t know what to make of all this, really. More than anything, it makes me curious about all the other dreams I have that I never get to know anything about.

I’m grateful that my wife woke me up for this one, though, and I’m glad that I could remember enough details to articulate it here in this story. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed re-living it.