No One Wants To Hear About the Dumb Dream You Had Last Night

Summary

The author expresses deep frustration with people sharing their dream narratives, considering it a tedious and self-indulgent practice.

Abstract

The article titled "No One Wants To Hear About the Dumb Dream You Had Last Night" conveys the author's exasperation with the retelling of dreams, which they equate to a form of verbal hostage-taking. The author argues that dreams lack the coherent structure of real stories and are inherently uninteresting to others. Despite societal norms that discourage rudeness, the author feels that listening to dream stories is akin to a form of torture, made worse by the fact that even loved ones, such as the author's wife, mother, and friend John, as well as the author's own father, persist in sharing their dreams, often with a sense of urgency or significance that the author finds unjustified. The article suggests that the act of narrating dreams is a compensatory behavior for a lack of interesting real-life events and advises against it, even humorously suggesting that people would be better off lying about more engaging fictional events.

Opinions

Dream narratives are inherently boring and lack a compelling story structure.
Sharing dreams is inconsiderate and exploits social rules of politeness.
The author believes that people share dreams to compensate for a lack of excitement in their waking lives.
The significance people attribute to their dreams is met with skepticism and annoyance by the author.
The author would prefer to hear fabricated stories about real-life events than actual accounts of dreams.
The article implies that the author has a low tolerance for what they perceive as nonsensical and self-absorbed storytelling.
The author suggests that even close relationships do not exempt one from the tedium of dream recounting.
The author uses hyperbolic and colorful language to emphasize their aversion to listening to dream stories.

There’s a reason only you can see your dreams — no one else wants to

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels, image by author

I came close to divorcing my wife over how bad she is at telling stories. I’m not kidding. Not just any stories, either. Stories about her dreams. She stumbles for words. It’s like her brain is a fridge covered in alphabet magnets, and she’s trying to rearrange them into a coherent narrative.

“And then there was like, a floor — right? Made of glass but also out of cardboard? And then — remember the warbling plane from earlier? That was there but now it looked like a streetlight only instead of a light, it was an eye. And a light came out of the eye, and it showed like a movie of you being destroyed? You know?”

I don’t care if I’m in someone’s dream. I don’t want to hear it. I promise you that not a single person in your life — not even the therapist you pay to care — gives a good gosh darn. And lest you think I just hate my wife, she’s not alone. Take this bullshit from my friend John.

“Then I was naked in front of everyone and all my teeth fell out, right? And then the teacher who was also the taxi driver that took me to the airport in 2006 when I was 23? Well they came up to me and told me that you were going to be destroyed. Crazy, right?”

When you talk about your dreams, you’re exploiting societal rules of politeness that forbid walking away from boring situations. You’re holding people verbally hostage. I’ll let the “conversation” happen to me, but I hate you, and every minute you keep talking.

My mom called me a couple weeks ago, and sure as shit on the floor of a rural gas station, she told me about a dream she kept having. She started it out by calling me “son” so I knew it was bad news.

“Son, I had the weirdest dream. I sat in the house, and it didn’t feel like a dream at all. The outside looked like the outside, the kitchen table — where I sat — looked like the kitchen table. A man who had no face walked in and I was afraid. He sat down across from me in silence for what felt like a very long time. Then he said, ‘Your son is going to be destroyed.’ Then he got up, and left. Then I woke up at the kitchen table, even though I’d fallen asleep reading in bed. Crazy, right?”

Sure, mom. Crazy.

Dreams possess an internal logic that’s impossible to convey to whoever isn’t actively experiencing it. They lack standard story structure and thus, lack any compelling reason for me to want to listen.

I don’t even listen to my doctor when he talks about the thing growing in my brain. Dreams are the swamp gas of the mind. You aren’t fooling anyone when you attempt to spice them with metaphysical significance. It’s obvious that you have nothing interesting happening in real life — but why do you think a dream makes up for that? At least lie about how you stood up to an angry customer at a store, even though such an action requires a strength we both know you lack.

Just a few days ago my dad — who lives with my mom on the other side of the country — showed up at my house. He was shiny with sweat, and panted like he ran the whole damn way. He smelled awful.

“Son. Thank god, son. Thank god. I’ve been having dreams. Bad ones. In them, the birds flock in biblical numbers and speak as one, saying that you’re going to be destroyed.”

I closed the door in his face and ignored his frantic knocking. People who had a dream are like white people who — one time — didn’t do a racism to a person of color. Meaning, they don’t shut the fuck up about it.

Right now, my whole coterie of acquaintances are standing out front. My wife, my mom, my dad, my John. Others. Suspended there like a crucified enemy of Rome, only without a visible cross. There’s even blood in the requisite places. Their eyes are open sockets of gore. The sky behind their tormented faces is darker than the mouth of Abaddon. They’re begging me for help.

But I ain’t falling for that again. Fool me once, and all that jazz.

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